![]() ![]() ![]() Lucia Pini sees Zecchin’s glass and paintings and Chini’s ceramics, developed following this artistic revelation, as “the translation of Klimt’s inspiration into a minute, magical, two-dimensional decorative score, transposed without the disturbing element characteristic of Klimt’s work.” But this disturbing element – “a sort of ambivalence between Eros and Thanatos”, recalls Pini –, is always present in Klimt: it was a foreboding sign of the looming wars of the Short Century and, a hundred years later, it is still as relevant as ever. This wave of creativity came to Italy a little later, after Klimt appeared at the Biennale di Venezia in 1910. “Casorati’s masks are inspired by ancient Egypt,”, explains the director of Galleria Ricci Oddi, “a way of looking far back into the exotic past that was part of the culture of the Secession”. Another incredible aspect is the modernity of some of the items,” continues Lucia Pini, “such as Hoffmann’s metal wire baskets: they were made in 1905, and he had the idea of using this sort of pre-printed mesh and making it into a highly significant object, of a modernity that was well ahead of its time.” The three baskets, oblong in shape with an arched handle, do not look their age, 117 years, and would look perfectly at home in a gift shop today. Ivory is not a very common thing, but it may be found inlaid in the furnishings, as in a marvellous little jewellery box with two Egyptian profiles made around the year 1903. The Wiener Werkstätte was an all-round project which excluded no technique or material, however unusual. Lucia Pini, the new director of Galleria d’Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi, helps me to understand the unusual and precious cross-section of items on display in the exhibition: “The impressive thing is the variety of techniques and materials these objects reveal to us, because there was no area they did not explore: ivory, ceramics, bronze, precious metals, glass. But the exhibition, curated by Gabriella Belli and Elena Pontiggia with scientific coordination by Lucia Pini, director of Galleria Ricci Oddi, includes 160 works not only by Klimt himself but by Edvard Munch, Odilon Redon, James Ensor, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokoschka, as well as an interesting collection of furnishings, silverware, ceramics, bas-reliefs, jewels, tapestries and decorative works made by the famous Wiener Werkstätte, the creative community that translated the aesthetic principles of the Secession into the applied arts, and by Klimt’s Italian followers after he exhibited at the Biennale di Venezia in 1910. The great artist is represented by many of his works, all somehow related to the 1916-17 ‘Portrait of a Lady’ owned by Galleria Ricci Oddi which is the fulcrum of the exhibition: a painting that is doubly mysterious, firstly because it is painted over top of a previous portrait once believed to have been lost, and secondly because it was stolen in 1997 and found again in 2019 following a series of events which is still unclear today. ![]()
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