Klimt and Italian Art
Exhibition - from thursday 16 mar 2023 | to sunday 27 aug 2023
- When
- from thursday 16 mar 2023 | to sunday 27 aug 2023
- Cost
- General admission €15, discount admission €10 (ticket valid for all current exhibitions)
- Credits
- From an idea by Vittorio Sgarbi. Curated by Beatrice Avanzi
- Where
- Mart Rovereto
- Type
- Exhibition
You have fascinated many eyes
In a dream-filled sleep
Felice Casorati
In an exceptional reunion, two "Italian" masterpieces by Klimt, "Judith II" and "The Three Ages of Woman", acquired by important public collections, are on exhibit at the Mart.
At the peak of his career, the Austrian Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), father of the Vienna Secession, exhibited at the 1910 Venice Biennale and the 1911 International Exhibition in Rome, organised on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Italy.
Klimt's highly personal and innovative style influenced an entire generation of artists who, between the 1910s and 1920s, were to dramatically renew their own artistic language. These were major figures active mainly in Venice, Trieste, Trento and Verona, in the areas directly influenced by, or close to, Austrian and Mitteleuropean culture.
The exhibition features around 40 artists, including painters working in Venice, such as Vittorio Zecchin, the so-called “Italian Klimt”; or the young “dissidents” from Ca' Pesaro, like Felice Casorati; without forgetting those involved in the great decorative undertakings of the Biennale, such as Galileo Chini. There are also those who, due to geographical and cultural proximity, had particular affinities with the Secession movement, such as Vito Timmel from Trieste or Luigi Bonazza, Luigi Ratini and Benvenuto Disertori from Trento. The Austrian and Germanic atmosphere also inevitably inspired the work of sculptor Adolfo Wildt, defined by critics as “the Klimt of sculpture”.
Though tending to look towards the artistic language of the north, to the Vienna and Munich Secessions, the Italians reworked Klimt's influence in an autonomous and original way: the references are visible in the decorations, lines, colours and style that eventually blended with local artistic styles, allowing new developments to emerge.
With around 200 works from leading public and private collections, the Mart presents a varied and complex panorama, in which different disciplines – from painting to the decorative arts – coexist, all distinguished by a recognisably sumptuous, seductive and decadent taste.