A Personal Calligraphy: The Art of Gillo Dorfles - Movimento Arte Concreta

The long-lived artist and art critic Gillo Dorfles was born in Trieste in 1910, and in 2013 was still able to be actively involved in designing the Tibetan Pavilion for the 55th Venice Biennale.

Gillo Dorfles

His chief period as an active artist spanned essentially the life of the influential abstract movement he co-founded, MAC, the Movimento Arte Concreta. MAC was founded by Gillo Dorfles, Atanasio Soldati, Bruno Munari, and Gianni Monnet in 1948, and disbanded in 1958 after the premature death of Monnet. Writing in the New York Times in 1955, when Dorfles was showing a group of monotypes at the Wittenborn Gallery, D. Ashton notes that, "In most of his prints, the emphasis is on a personal calligraphy that can be read for meaning, like handwriting. . . At times the rhythmic interplay of line resembles the intricate symbolic designs on ancient oriental bronzes. In his delicacy of color and the emphasis on integral rhythms, Dorfles achieves a lyrical quality." These comments apply equally to his lithographs of the same period. Sadly I have found it very hard to capture the deep glowing background colours of these lithographs in my photographs - the originals are really intense and vibrant.

Gillo Dorfles

Five untitled lithographs, 1955

Gillo Dorfles

Two untitled woodcuts, 1956

After the disbandment of MAC, Gillo Dorfles devoted most of his energies to teaching and writing about art and aesthetics, though he also continued to create his own art.

A Travel Sculpture by Bruno Munari: Movimento Arte Concreta

Bruno Munari, about whom there is a very interesting article here relating to a 2002 exhibition at the Milan Dobeš Museum, was one of the four founders of MAC, the Movimento Arte Concreta, an Italian abstract art movement that flourished from 1948-1958. Born in Milan in 1907, Munari enjoyed a long career of restless creativity. In the late 1920s and the 1930s Bruno Munari was a member of Marinetti's Futurist movement, from which he disassociated himself after WWII, because of Futurism's links with fascism. Bruno Munari was a pioneer of installation art, mobile and kinetic art, photocopy art and all kinds of inventive creations such as his useless machines and unreadable books. Among his most charming creations are his "sculture da viaggio" - portable sculptures cut out of card that can be folded for travel. One of these was included in the final publication of MAC/Espace, the 1958 volume of Documenti d'arte d'oggi. Beautifully simple, and simply beautiful.

Bruno Munari

Scultura da viaggio, 1958

The two silkscreens below reflect one of Munari's most consistent concerns, the arrangement of planes of colour in a square format. He created the first of these Negativi-Positivi for the cover of Art d'Aujourd'hui in 1952. In 1945 the New York publication the Magazine of Art wrote of Munari's Negativi-Positivi, "his interest lies further in the advance and recession of planes, and in the possibilities for double-focus - that is, planes that seen to shift their position according to the juxtaposition."

Bruno Munari, Negativo/Positivo

Silkscreen, 1955

Bruno Munari, Negativo-Positivo

Silkscreen, 1956-57

(sorry about the wonky photo!)

MAC was dissolved in 1958, after the death of co-founder Gianni Monnet. Bruno Munari lived another 40 years, during which he continued to make art with ceaseless invention, and also forged a career as the creator of highly-innovative picture books for children, which encouraged kinaesthetic learning. Bruno Munari died in Milan in 1998.

Women artists of MAC: Movimento Arte Concreta

What critical attention that has been focused on the Movimento Arte Concreta has been on the male artists who formed the overwhelming majority of the members of MAC. So I thought before I turned my attention to the men I would post about the three women who contributed original art to Documenti d'arte d'oggi.

Simonetta Vigevani Jung (1917-2005)

The first of these is Simonetta Vigevani Jung. She was born Simonetta Irene Jung in Palermo, Sicily in 1917. She first exhibited in Milan in 1955, and in New York the following year at the Duveen-Graham Gallery. Her work is distinguished by its dynamic forms and vivid colours - though colour is not an essential element of her art, as two cool black-and-white studies in line and form go to show. I have to say I personally prefer the colour work, with its enticing sense of cosmic rhythm. Writing of her "Light Forms" (Forme Luce) paintings of 1955 (to which the first six of my lithographs are closely related), Albert Duveen remarks on their "lilting airiness": "The lyrical movements, detached and ethereal, are created with such vivacity that they bespeak of a joyous nature - their voluptuousness, a refined sensuality. Here then is a personal language, emotional but disciplined, stirring us to our very depth. Truly a revelation rarely produced before within the limits of the abstract."

Simonetta Vigevani Jung

Six untitled lithographs (Forme Luce), 1955

Simonetta Vigevani Jung

Two untitled lithographs, 1956-57

Simonetta Vigevani Jung

Untitled lithograph, 1958

Though there is a monograph on her work by Giuseppe Marchiori, Simonetta Vigevani Jung seems to have fallen into underserved obscurity. She was first married to Angelo Vigevani with whom she had a daughter Diana. Vigevani died in a car accident when their daughter was seventeen years old. She remarried and then lived in Brussels with her husband Hubert De Schryver who was a Belgian consul. Simonetta Vigevani Jung died in Brussels in 2005.

Carol Rama (1918- )

The second female member of MAC is Carol Rama. One of Italy's most important female artists of the twentieth century, Carol Rama was born in Turin on 17 April 1918. Though she is now best-known for her provocative drawings and paintings exploring female sexuality, in a naive, almost "Outsider" style, in the 1950s Carol Rama was also an active member of the Movimento Arte Concreta. At this period she often spelled her name as one word, Carolrama. I really like her abstract compositions of this period, with their distinctive arrangements of block forms connected by thin rods.

Carol Rama

Five untitled lithographs, 1955

Carol Rama and Albino Galvano (1907-1990)

Joint composition on one lithographic stone, 1956-57

Carol Rama's lifetime creating art was recognised at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, when she was presented with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Major retrospectives have been held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and ICA Boston (1998), at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in her birthplace of Turin (2004), and at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (2005). In 2003 the Esso Gallery, New York, staged the exhibition Carol Rama, past and present.

Regina with her husband, Luigi Bracchi

Lastly, I have two lithographs by the sculptor Regina Cassolo Bracchi, who worked simply as Regina. Regina was born in Mede in 1894, and studied at the Brera Academy. She studied sculpture under Giovanni Battista Alloati. A member of the Futurists from 1933, Regina was also a member of MAC. After the disbanding of MAC, Regina continued to work in a Futurist style.

Regina (1894-1974)

Untitled lithograph, 1955-56

Regina

Untitled lithograph, 1956-57

Regina died in Milan in 1974. The Museo Regina in the Castle of Mede contains more than 500 works left by her husband the artist Luigi Bracchi. A 1991 monograph on her work by Luciano Caramel is now very hard to find. In 2010 the Fondazione Ambrosetti Arte Contemporanea staged an important exhibition on this neglected female artist, REGINA. Futurismo, arte concreta e oltre, curated by Paolo Campiglio.

Concrete Art in Italy: Movimento Arte Concreta

Concrete Art is a term applied to various abstract art movements. The term was coined by Theo van Doesburg in his 1930 Manifesto of Concrete Art. Van Doesburg's insistence that art should be formed from the "concrete" elements of form and colour without reference to the physical world was championed by the Swiss artist Max Bill, a former student of Josef Albers and Wassily Kandinsky at the Bauhaus. In the late 1940s and the 1950s two groups influenced by Bill flourished in France and Italy: Groupe Espace and MAC, the Movimento Arte Concreta. The two groups exhibited in combination in Italy as Gruppo Espace.

Poster for the 1954-1955 Gruppo Espace exhibition in Milan,

and the verso with woodcuts by Enrico Bordoni (1904-1969)

and Silvano Bozzolini (1911-1998)

MAC was formed in 1948 by four Italian artists: Atanasio Soldati, Gillo Dorfles, Bruno Munari, and Gianni Monnet. It disbanded in 1958, following the premature death of Gianni Monnet at the age of 46.   Besides collective exhibitions, the members of MAC produced four remarkable collections of art and writing entitled Documenti d'arte d'oggi. These publications, which were packed with original lithographs, silkscreens, and woodcuts, came out in 1954, 1955-56, 1956-57, and 1958; I have copies of the second, third, and fourth, but not that for 1954. Now extremely rare, they must have been produced in very small editions, because there is so much handwork in the production, with everything printed on different kinds and weights of paper, and all kinds of collaged elements added. Gianni Monnet in particular was very interested in adding texture by sticking on bits of sandpaper and the like. One of his lithographs has, in addition to various hand-punched holes, a piece of scrumpled newspaper collaged on the surface, and impressions on the surface caused by small oblongs of sandpaper and corrugated board fixed to the facing page.

Gianni Monnet (1912-1958)

Original lithograph with hand-punched holes and collaged newspaper, 1956

photographed against a white background

The same Gianni Monnet lithograph

photographed as a double-page spread, with colour showing through the holes from the image behind

Rectangles of corrugated card and sandpaper on the facing page

A list of members of Gruppo MAC/Espace in the 1956-1957 volume lists 74 names and addresses. At that time there was a governing committee of six: Gillo Dorfles, Gianni Monnet (Secretary), Bruno Munari, Enrico Prampolini, Mauro Reggiani (President), and Vittoriano Viganó. The  majority are listed as painters or sculptors, but there are also plenty of architects and engineers. Several members of MAC achieved fame as industrial and interior designers, including Joe Colombo (Cesare Colombo, 1930-1971), whose Total Furnishing Unit, unveiled at the Museum of Modern Art in New York the year after his death, was a complete "living-machine" comprising kitchen, wardrobe, bathroom and bedroom on just 28 square metres. All the listed members are Italian, but the same page also gives the committee members for Espace in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, and England. The English group included the architect Wells Coates and the painter Victor Pasmore; the French, André Bloc, Sonia Delaunay, and Edgard Pillet; the Swiss, Alfred Roth, Max Bill, and Richard Paul Lohse; the Swedish, Eric Olson and Olle Baertling. So there was certainly an international dimension to this Italian art movement, which even had a toehold in the USA through the Wittenborn Gallery, which represented MAC artists such as Gillo Dorfles; George Wittenborn also gave limited American distribution to Documenti d'arte d'oggi.

Bruno Munari (1907-1998)

Lithograph cover for Documenti d'arte d'oggi, 1955-1956

I believe the collaged strip of shiny red was an "intervention"

by Gianni Monnet, but can't now trace the source of this information

Luigi Veronesi (1908-1998)

Lithograph cover for Documenti d'arte d'oggi, 1956-1957

Gianni Monnet

Lithograph cover for Documenti d'arte d'oggi, 1958

with die-cut circular hole and collaged corrugated board

- when first posting this, I failed to note that the purple sections are also collaged,

they are some kind of furry felt

Despite this international penetration, it has to be said that the MAC artists have rather fallen into neglect, certainly compared to the 1960s movement that followed, Arte Povera. Perhaps there wasn't a single star artist, whose light could reflect on the others. Perhaps the artist's concerns were too abstracted and intellectualised for popular appeal. Perhaps there just wasn't enough that was truly radical and new in the art they created. Or perhaps they have simply been victims of the fickleness of an art market that prefers a few big names to a lot of small ones, and a simple story arc to a fragmented narrative. I certainly think the death of Monnet and consequent disbandment of MAC stopped the movement in its tracks. Momentum was lost, and some of the major figures, such as Gillo Dorfles (who designed the cover for the 1954 Documenti d'arte d'oggi), turned their interests elsewhere. Although Dorfles carried on creating art, he put most of his energy into teaching and writing about art and aesthetics.

Tito B. Varisco, 1915-1998

Drawing (reproduced as a conventional line block, I think), slotted through a die-cut television screen;

the background drawing can be pulled up and down to reveal different sections on the screen.

This comment on the ways in which television would affect our visual perceptions

is a good example of the weird and wonderful stuff to be found in Documenti d'arte d'oggi.

It comes from the volume for 1955/56.

More to come on individual MAC artists.

Bittersweet beauty: an etching by Eduard Einschlag

The elegant turn-of-the-century lady, dressed in the height of fashion, has a sad story to tell. Although this is just speculation on my part, I believe the model is Louise Victoria Einschlag, the wife of the artist Eduard David Einschlag, whose signature is etched in the plate top right, along with the date '03. The etching was published the following year by the Leipzig art revue Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst.

Eduard David Einschlag, Damenbildnis

Etching with aquatint, 1903

Eduard David Einschlag was born in Leipzig in 1879, into a Jewish family. He studied at the fine art Academies of Leipzig, Munich (where he learned etching from Peter Halm), and Berlin, returning to Leipzig to live and work in 1910. Eduard Einschlag is known for his paintings and for his masterly etchings in a post-Impressionist style. In 1938 Eduard and Louise Victoria Einschlag were deported by the Nazis, and both were murdered at the Treblinka extermination camp, sometime around 1942.

Born out of his time: Willem Linnig, Junior

First of all - apologies to all readers of this blog for the long time-lapse. Life has been difficult, and I was simply unable to keep going. But I hope this new post will be the first of many - perhaps one a month, not one a day like some manic bloggers!

Why have almost none of us ever heard of Willem Linneg, Junior, and why do I say he was born out of his time? Of course, he lived through the very same days and years as anyone else born in 1842 who died in 1890. Not a long life - he died aged 48 - but a very productive one. A great many paintings, and  123 listed etchings, of which I have 4 to share with you. But Monet was born in 1840, Renoir in 1841, Pissarro in 1830. Does Willem Linnig, Junior, show any sign of having heard of any of these artists? No, he does not. He looks back - back to the Flemish Golden Age, and back to the French artists of the 18th-century. So no wonder he has fallen through the cracks of art history. Yet I am intrigued by his work, and hope you will be too.

Willem Linnig, Junior: Portrait de Preller

(Porträt Friedrich Prellers, Portrait of Friedrich Preller)

Etching, 1881

Linnig 70

Linnig came from a dynasty of celebrated Belgian artists, whose output was surveyed in a 1991 exhibition, with a catalogue by P. Verbraeken et. al., Linnig: Ein Antwerpse kunstenaarsdynastie in de 19de eeuw. His father, also Willem Linnig, and his uncles Égide Linnig and Jan Theodor Linnig, were all successful painters. But none of them were artistic daredevils, and it was in their studios (especially that of his father) that Willem Linnig, Junior, learned his trade. He did briefly attend the Antwerp Academy, to study under Verschaeren, but was a difficult pupil. He was booted out by the Director, Nicaise de Keyser, with the words, "Go, you'll never be a painter."

Willem Linnig Junior: Head of a Gypsy

(Kopf eines Zigeuners)

Etching, 1882

The catalogue of Linnig's etchings in French does not give a precise match for this.

I assume this may be Linnig 67, Le contrabandier, but have no proof.

Nevertheless, Linnig persevered. In 1876 he became a professor at the Grand-Ducal Academy of Weimar (Grossherzoglich-Sächsische Kunstschule Weimar), where he remained until 1882. Among his students were Herman Schlittgen, Paul Baum, and Leopold von Kalckreuth.

Willem Linnig, Junior: Portrait de Liszt

(Porträt Franz Liszts, Portrait of Franz Liszt)

Etching, 1883

Linnig 71

The best selection of paintings by Linnig that I have found online are the 18 paintings by him in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp. The best selection of etchings is the one in this post. The etchings were first catalogued by Pol de Mont in 1897, in De Vlaamse School, and subsequently by Benjamin Linnig in Paul André, Le Peintre Willem Linnig, Junior, 1907. This gives no precise dates for the etchings, so the dates given in this post are those in which the etchings were published in the Leipzig art revue, Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst.

Willem Linnig, Junior, after Peter Paul Rubens: Nymphes et Satyres

(Dryaden und Fanisten, Nymphs and Satyrs)

Etching, 1888

Linnig 100

I don't think anyone would claim Willem Linnig, Junior (or Willem Linnig the Younger, or Willem Linnig II, as he is sometimes known) as a particularly important or influential artist. But his work has a mixture of carefulness and abandon that appeals to me. He traces the lineaments of his sitters with great care, and then throws himself into spiralling curls of hair, beards and moustaches, and a signature that is the definition of flamboyance. If he had really let himself go, what could he have achieved? There's a clue in the single interpretative etching among his tally of 123, a highly spirited romp through a painting by Rubens, of Nymphs and Satyrs cavorting. I really think this is my favourite among my four etchings by Willem Linnig, Junior, because it shows a freedom of line, an exuberance, that I feel was lurking underneath his elegant precision, just waiting to burst out.

A Communard in Dickensian London: Auguste Lancon

In 1986 I edited, with my friend Victor E. Neuburg, a collection of Charles Dickens's social criticism, under the title A December Vision. One of the pleasures of that project was researching visual images to match Dickens's texts on London's workhouses, prisons, and ragged schools. Illustrators such as George Cruickshank, Phiz, Watts Phillips, W.G. Mason, Kenny Meadows, William M'Connell, A. Henning, and various Punch cartoonists, enlivened the pages, along with work by two French artists, Gustave Doré and Gavarni. But I don't recall ever coming across the searing etchings of Auguste Lançon, created around 1880 to accompany the text La Rue à Londres by his friend Jules Vallès, published in 1884. It's a shame as many of them perfectly illustrate the scenes of poverty and desperation that so strongly roused Dickens's sense of injustice and inequality.

Auguste Lançon, Un abreuvoir dans Tottenham-Court-Road

Etching, 1884

Auguste Lançon, Une ruelle dans Spitalfields

Etching, 1884

Auguste Lançon, Pauvresses accroupies contre le mur du "Workhouse" de Saint-Giles

Etching, dated 1881 in the plate

Both Vallès and Lançon were Communards, exiled in London after the fall of the ill-fated Paris Commune in 1871. Vallès was actually condemned to death, but escaped to England. Lançon spent six months imprisoned in the Satory camp - presumably in a similar cell to that of Philippe Cattelain - before joining Vallès in exile in London. Men such as Jules Vallès and Auguste Lançon were primed by their own experiences and deeply-held political beliefs to side with those in the underbelly of Victorian society, and rage against their plight. Both the text and etchings are very powerful evocations of the pitiful condition of the London poor, at the height of Britain's power and wealth, and it is a shame that La Rue à Londres seems so little known, presumably because it was never translated into English.

Auguste Lançon, Le soir dans un "Lodging-House" de Drury Lane

Etching, dated 1880 in the plate

Auguste Lançon, Un ménage d'émigrants Irlandais dans un "Lodging-House" de Drury Lane

Etching, 1884

Auguste Lançon, La salle basse d'un "Lodging-House" de femmes dans Drury Lane

Etching, 1884

Auguste Lançon is an artist I had previously come across largely as an accomplished etcher of animal scenes, so these London etchings come as something of a revelation. They are beautifully observed, often quite dark, and full of telling details. As records of the life of the London poor at this period, these remarkable etchings stand comparison with the wood engravings of Gustave Doré for Blanchard Jerrold's London.

Auguste Lançon, La servante "The General Servant"

Etching, 1884

Auguste Lançon, La cuisine

Etching, dated 1880 in the plate

Auguste Lançon, Types de petites ouvrières dans leur intérieur

Etching, 1884

Auguste André Lançon was born in 1836 in Saint-Claude in the Jura, the son of a carpenter. Lançon was first apprenticed to a lithographer in Saint-Claude, then studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, and finally went to Paris to study under Picot. He first exhibited at the Salon de Paris in 1861, under the name André Lançon, which he continued to use until 1870.

Auguste Lançon, Un campement de "Gypsies"

Etching, 1884

When Lançon began exhibiting again in 1872, after the interruption of the Franco-Prussian War, the Commune, and imprisonment, it was as Auguste Lançon, and this switch of first names has led to confusion, with some writers assuming that André and Auguste were two different artists. La Rue à Londres credits him as A. Lançon, though most of the etchings are signed in the plate Aug. Lançon.

Auguste Lançon, Chez Painter le marchand de tortues - Les réservoirs

Etching, 1884

La Rue à Londres was published by Georges Charpentier in an edition of 600 copies: 50 on Whatman with the etchings in two states, 50 on Japan, also with the etchings in two states, and 500 on wove paper, with the etchings in their final state. In all cases the etchings themselves were printed by either A. Salmon or F. Liénard on Hollande wove paper. The front cover claims 23 etchings, the title page 22, the latter being the correct total.