Piero Marussig
Trieste, 1879 - Pavia, 1937
Piero Marussig, after training in his hometown under Eugenio Scomparini, traveled between major European cities such as Vienna, Munich and Paris, where he came into contact with the Impressionists, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Seurat. Around 1912 his first expressive breakthrough took place: an expressionist ignition of color crept into the works of Secessionist and Munich ascendancy. From April to October of that year, he also participated for the first time with the work Sull'erba at the Venice Biennale, where from this time on he would always be present.
Piero Marussig, after training in his hometown under Eugenio Scomparini, a student of Grigoletti, decided to complete his education by traveling between major European cities, such as Vienna, Munich and Paris, where he came into contact with the Impressionists, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Seurat. After his marriage to Rina Drenik in 1903, he went to Rome to deepen his knowledge of the classics, becoming especially fond of Titian: his alleged first participation in an exhibition is from this period
Back in Trieste, he continued with a tonal painting with pale and bluish dominants, alternating experiments with etching, including Portrait of a Woman (1910). His first documented exhibition was in 1906, at the Milan Exposition for the inauguration of the new Simplon Pass: he participated with two works, Toward the Earth and the self-portrait Laughing Man.
Around 1912, his first expressive breakthrough occurred: an expressionist ignition of color crept into the works of Secessionist and Munich ancestry.
From April to October of the same year, he also participated for the first time with the work Sull'erba at the Venice Biennale, where from this time on he would always be present. In March the following year he was present at the II National Art Exhibition in Naples, both as organizer of the Trieste hall and as an artist, exhibiting My Mother-in-law and Two Landscapes. In the same period he also participated in the I Roman Secession with The Potato Harvest and In the Garden.
Little is known about the wartime period. During these years, however, he continued to paint, taking the vibration of the sign to extremes in some outcomes. Works such as Trees in Bloom of 1917 are structured as a dusting of color-matter, innervated by a strong linearism.
Important exhibitions followed, such as his presence at the Quadriennale in Turin - at the Promotrice - in the June-September period of 1919 with Siesta, La casetta, Testa di vecchia, which revealed him to the public of enthusiasts and in the eyes of the critics, underscored by his persistent presence at the Venetian biennials.
And precisely on the occasion of an exhibition at the Galleria Vinciana in Milan, also in '19 he became part of Margherita Sarfatti's circle. He then moved to Milan, where he lived until his death.
In '20 he abandoned the expressionist period, moving to a more classical language.
In March, the Galleria Arte, directed by Mario Buggelli, opens in the basement of 10 Via Dante in Milan: Marussig participates in the inaugural collective with Bucci, Dudreville, Funi, Sironi, Arturo Martini, Carrà, de Chirico, Russolo, Zanini and other artists.
It is almost a prelude to the "Novecento" exhibition.
Dec. 7: On the feast of St. Ambrose, the Novecento Italiano group comes to the Pesaro, beginning to display a painting in the gallery's window in rotation. The seven artists agree to exhibit only together, or at least with the consent of the group. A happy blurb by Sarfatti comes out the following day in the "Popolo d'Italia."
March 26, 1923: The permanent exhibition of the "Novecento" at the Pesaro Gallery opens in the presence of Mussolini. Marussig, with Funi, Sironi, Oppi and Malerba are present at the opening, while Bucci and Dudreville linger polemically at the Caffè Cova, not far from the gallery. Oppi later resigned from the group.
In 1925 Marussig joined the Steering Committee of the Novecento Italiano, composed of Sarfatti (who, however, would henceforth speak of him only hastily), six artists (Marussig, Funi, Sironi, Tosi, Wildt and Salietti, secretary of the group), Gaspare Gussoni future owner of the Galleria Milano, the mayor of Milan Mangiagalli, and other personalities.
In Rome at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni is the III Roman Art Biennale; the "Novecento" is gathered in one room: it is the group's first outing after its refoundation. Marussig exhibits here his masterpiece, Two Young Women (Donne al caffè), now in Milan's Civiche Raccolte, as well as a Still Life and Bambina.
Numerous exhibitions followed, including abroad, such as in London (Exhibition of Modern Italian Art), Paris (Première Exposition à Paris d'un Group de Peintres du Novecento Italiano), Geneva (Exposition d'Artistes Italiens Contemporains) and Zurich (Italienische Malerei), as well as Hamburg, Berlin and Amsterdam.
Feb. 14-March 30: I Novecento Italiano Exhibition at Palazzo della Permanente, presented by Sarfatti. Numerous, and more positive than at the 1924 Venice Biennale, are the reviews. Around 1928 a new change is felt in his painting, which opens to more intense chromatic outcomes. The sobriety of hues typical of the first Novecentist season gives way to a glazed and luminous draftsmanship.
In March, the Galleria Milano, owned by Gaspare Gussoni and his son-in-law Vittorio Barbaroux, opens with the exhibition "Seven Modern Painters" (Bernasconi, Carrà, Funi, Marussig, Salietti, Sironi and Tosi), which from this moment becomes the gallery of the Novecentists. But the following year Marussig's detachment from the style of early Novecentism, characterized by a "decisive and precise" form, as Sarfatti theorized, became more pronounced.
The drawing now appears freer and more moved, with a compendiary tendency that intensifies over the years. In the Novecentista group his color is now among the brightest. During this period he stayed for a few months in Liguria, a guest of Francesco Messina with whom he formed a lively friendship and who would execute a famous portrait of him. Increasingly, he also traveled to Lake Maggiore, Laveno, and to Lake Como and Iseo: these sojourns would have important echoes in his later production.
With Funi and the sculptor Timo Bortolotti he opened an art school at 10 Via Vivaio, Milan, which was based on knowledge of the craft and was an ancient workshop.
More exhibitions, such as the important solo show at Galleria Milano in the period November 27-December 10, 1930. It is his second Milan solo exhibition after the one in 1919 and fully documents the stylistic change in his painting. Numerous and flattering reviews by Bonardi, Sironi, Somarè, Torriano. Transparent from these writings is the ongoing debate: critics close to the "Novecento" such as Somarè, Costantini and obviously Sironi emphasize the continuity of the artist's work, even though the style varies, while Torriano accentuates its "impressionistic" and anti-novecentist dimension.
In 1931 he was not invited to the I Quadriennale in Rome, despite the presence of Margherita Sarfatti on the commission. He maintains a defiladed position even in the polemics unleashed in this period against the "Novecento." He nevertheless continues to exhibit in Novecento Italiano exhibitions, but his position is increasingly marginal. While Sironi begins his battle for mural painting, Marussig's art, collected and intimist, ill-suited to the monumental dimension, is alien to the last Novecento season. However, the artist remains linked to his fellow artists by the bonds of deep friendship and mutual esteem, and especially with Funi and Messina are the closest relations. He also frequents De Grada, his son Raffaellino and Reggiani, but remains a secluded artist. In February he exhibited at Galleria Milano at the exhibition "Modern Artists" (Bernasconi, Carrà, De Amicis, De Grada, De Pisis, Funi, Marussig, Salietti, Sironi). From the reviews it seems that he chose, for this occasion, works set on a crisp volumetry, although his research now turns toward an increasingly compendious signic looseness.
In 1934 his painting moves beyond the fast, impressionistic pictoricism and back to a more precise and accomplished drawing. In the meantime Costantini's essay Pittura italiana contemporanea came out, a large chapter of which was devoted to Marussig.
A sporadic abstract outcome (dated 1932, but undoubtedly to be postponed), already foreshadowed by certain earlier still lifes, of great essentiality, and evidence also of the frequentation with Reggiani, is from 1935.
January 23-February 14, 1937: group show "Twenty Signatures" at the Milione. The exhibition, which includes a large number of Novecentisti (Bernasconi, Borra, Funi, Martini, Marino, Marussig, Zanini), as well as Campigli and De Chirico and the group of abstracts, codifies, as the Bollettino says, the gallery's "return to order," which no longer identifies with the abstractionism sustained the previous years. Marussig here exhibits The Gypsy and Landscape.
In April the Milione exhibition moved to Genoa, to the Genoa Gallery, with the title "Twenty Signatures of Living Art." On that occasion Marussig traveled to the Ligurian city, but in July he was forced to be hospitalized at the Policlinico di Pavia, accompanied by his friend Francesco Messina, for a serious liver disease. He will die on October 13 after a long hospitalization due to cirrhosis of the liver.
In the aftermath of his death Carrà wrote of him, "All the canvases that Marussig left us reveal the moral uprightness of the disinterested artist, all the work postulates a principle and an ethical end that in itself transcends it. [...] Marussig would have liked to have been born for the dream, and up to a certain point his existence was that of a loner. He was an aristocrat of the spirit, and he had for art a passion so pure and strong that perhaps it was not understood even by us who were close to him."
Museums:
Amsterdam
Genoa
Milan, Gallery of Modern Art
Milan, Brera Art Gallery
Milan, Museum of the Twentieth Century
Montevideo
Moscow
Novara
Trieste, Rivoltella Museum
Bibliography:
A. Podestà Collezione Giovanni Finazzi, Ed. Ist. D’Arti Grafiche, 1942; XXIV Biennale di Venezia, Edizioni Serenissima, 1948; Enciclopedia Universale Seda della pittura moderna, 1969, Milano, Vol. IV; Dizionario illustrato dei Pittori, Disegnatori e Incisori Italiani Moderni e Contemporanei Comanducci, Luigi Patuzzi Editore, Milano, 1974, Vol. III; G. Maschera, Piero Marussig. Dalla provincia mitteleuropea al Novecento Italiano, Ed Biblioteca d’arte, Trieste 1987; N. Colombo, C. Gianferrari, E. Pontiggia Piero Marussig, Catalogo generale, Silvana Editoriale, Milano 2006
Back in Trieste, he continued with a tonal painting with pale and bluish dominants, alternating experiments with etching, including Portrait of a Woman (1910). His first documented exhibition was in 1906, at the Milan Exposition for the inauguration of the new Simplon Pass: he participated with two works, Toward the Earth and the self-portrait Laughing Man.
Around 1912, his first expressive breakthrough occurred: an expressionist ignition of color crept into the works of Secessionist and Munich ancestry.
From April to October of the same year, he also participated for the first time with the work Sull'erba at the Venice Biennale, where from this time on he would always be present. In March the following year he was present at the II National Art Exhibition in Naples, both as organizer of the Trieste hall and as an artist, exhibiting My Mother-in-law and Two Landscapes. In the same period he also participated in the I Roman Secession with The Potato Harvest and In the Garden.
Little is known about the wartime period. During these years, however, he continued to paint, taking the vibration of the sign to extremes in some outcomes. Works such as Trees in Bloom of 1917 are structured as a dusting of color-matter, innervated by a strong linearism.
Important exhibitions followed, such as his presence at the Quadriennale in Turin - at the Promotrice - in the June-September period of 1919 with Siesta, La casetta, Testa di vecchia, which revealed him to the public of enthusiasts and in the eyes of the critics, underscored by his persistent presence at the Venetian biennials.
And precisely on the occasion of an exhibition at the Galleria Vinciana in Milan, also in '19 he became part of Margherita Sarfatti's circle. He then moved to Milan, where he lived until his death.
In '20 he abandoned the expressionist period, moving to a more classical language.
In March, the Galleria Arte, directed by Mario Buggelli, opens in the basement of 10 Via Dante in Milan: Marussig participates in the inaugural collective with Bucci, Dudreville, Funi, Sironi, Arturo Martini, Carrà, de Chirico, Russolo, Zanini and other artists.
It is almost a prelude to the "Novecento" exhibition.
Dec. 7: On the feast of St. Ambrose, the Novecento Italiano group comes to the Pesaro, beginning to display a painting in the gallery's window in rotation. The seven artists agree to exhibit only together, or at least with the consent of the group. A happy blurb by Sarfatti comes out the following day in the "Popolo d'Italia."
March 26, 1923: The permanent exhibition of the "Novecento" at the Pesaro Gallery opens in the presence of Mussolini. Marussig, with Funi, Sironi, Oppi and Malerba are present at the opening, while Bucci and Dudreville linger polemically at the Caffè Cova, not far from the gallery. Oppi later resigned from the group.
In 1925 Marussig joined the Steering Committee of the Novecento Italiano, composed of Sarfatti (who, however, would henceforth speak of him only hastily), six artists (Marussig, Funi, Sironi, Tosi, Wildt and Salietti, secretary of the group), Gaspare Gussoni future owner of the Galleria Milano, the mayor of Milan Mangiagalli, and other personalities.
In Rome at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni is the III Roman Art Biennale; the "Novecento" is gathered in one room: it is the group's first outing after its refoundation. Marussig exhibits here his masterpiece, Two Young Women (Donne al caffè), now in Milan's Civiche Raccolte, as well as a Still Life and Bambina.
Numerous exhibitions followed, including abroad, such as in London (Exhibition of Modern Italian Art), Paris (Première Exposition à Paris d'un Group de Peintres du Novecento Italiano), Geneva (Exposition d'Artistes Italiens Contemporains) and Zurich (Italienische Malerei), as well as Hamburg, Berlin and Amsterdam.
Feb. 14-March 30: I Novecento Italiano Exhibition at Palazzo della Permanente, presented by Sarfatti. Numerous, and more positive than at the 1924 Venice Biennale, are the reviews. Around 1928 a new change is felt in his painting, which opens to more intense chromatic outcomes. The sobriety of hues typical of the first Novecentist season gives way to a glazed and luminous draftsmanship.
In March, the Galleria Milano, owned by Gaspare Gussoni and his son-in-law Vittorio Barbaroux, opens with the exhibition "Seven Modern Painters" (Bernasconi, Carrà, Funi, Marussig, Salietti, Sironi and Tosi), which from this moment becomes the gallery of the Novecentists. But the following year Marussig's detachment from the style of early Novecentism, characterized by a "decisive and precise" form, as Sarfatti theorized, became more pronounced.
The drawing now appears freer and more moved, with a compendiary tendency that intensifies over the years. In the Novecentista group his color is now among the brightest. During this period he stayed for a few months in Liguria, a guest of Francesco Messina with whom he formed a lively friendship and who would execute a famous portrait of him. Increasingly, he also traveled to Lake Maggiore, Laveno, and to Lake Como and Iseo: these sojourns would have important echoes in his later production.
With Funi and the sculptor Timo Bortolotti he opened an art school at 10 Via Vivaio, Milan, which was based on knowledge of the craft and was an ancient workshop.
More exhibitions, such as the important solo show at Galleria Milano in the period November 27-December 10, 1930. It is his second Milan solo exhibition after the one in 1919 and fully documents the stylistic change in his painting. Numerous and flattering reviews by Bonardi, Sironi, Somarè, Torriano. Transparent from these writings is the ongoing debate: critics close to the "Novecento" such as Somarè, Costantini and obviously Sironi emphasize the continuity of the artist's work, even though the style varies, while Torriano accentuates its "impressionistic" and anti-novecentist dimension.
In 1931 he was not invited to the I Quadriennale in Rome, despite the presence of Margherita Sarfatti on the commission. He maintains a defiladed position even in the polemics unleashed in this period against the "Novecento." He nevertheless continues to exhibit in Novecento Italiano exhibitions, but his position is increasingly marginal. While Sironi begins his battle for mural painting, Marussig's art, collected and intimist, ill-suited to the monumental dimension, is alien to the last Novecento season. However, the artist remains linked to his fellow artists by the bonds of deep friendship and mutual esteem, and especially with Funi and Messina are the closest relations. He also frequents De Grada, his son Raffaellino and Reggiani, but remains a secluded artist. In February he exhibited at Galleria Milano at the exhibition "Modern Artists" (Bernasconi, Carrà, De Amicis, De Grada, De Pisis, Funi, Marussig, Salietti, Sironi). From the reviews it seems that he chose, for this occasion, works set on a crisp volumetry, although his research now turns toward an increasingly compendious signic looseness.
In 1934 his painting moves beyond the fast, impressionistic pictoricism and back to a more precise and accomplished drawing. In the meantime Costantini's essay Pittura italiana contemporanea came out, a large chapter of which was devoted to Marussig.
A sporadic abstract outcome (dated 1932, but undoubtedly to be postponed), already foreshadowed by certain earlier still lifes, of great essentiality, and evidence also of the frequentation with Reggiani, is from 1935.
January 23-February 14, 1937: group show "Twenty Signatures" at the Milione. The exhibition, which includes a large number of Novecentisti (Bernasconi, Borra, Funi, Martini, Marino, Marussig, Zanini), as well as Campigli and De Chirico and the group of abstracts, codifies, as the Bollettino says, the gallery's "return to order," which no longer identifies with the abstractionism sustained the previous years. Marussig here exhibits The Gypsy and Landscape.
In April the Milione exhibition moved to Genoa, to the Genoa Gallery, with the title "Twenty Signatures of Living Art." On that occasion Marussig traveled to the Ligurian city, but in July he was forced to be hospitalized at the Policlinico di Pavia, accompanied by his friend Francesco Messina, for a serious liver disease. He will die on October 13 after a long hospitalization due to cirrhosis of the liver.
In the aftermath of his death Carrà wrote of him, "All the canvases that Marussig left us reveal the moral uprightness of the disinterested artist, all the work postulates a principle and an ethical end that in itself transcends it. [...] Marussig would have liked to have been born for the dream, and up to a certain point his existence was that of a loner. He was an aristocrat of the spirit, and he had for art a passion so pure and strong that perhaps it was not understood even by us who were close to him."
Museums:
Amsterdam
Genoa
Milan, Gallery of Modern Art
Milan, Brera Art Gallery
Milan, Museum of the Twentieth Century
Montevideo
Moscow
Novara
Trieste, Rivoltella Museum
Bibliography:
A. Podestà Collezione Giovanni Finazzi, Ed. Ist. D’Arti Grafiche, 1942; XXIV Biennale di Venezia, Edizioni Serenissima, 1948; Enciclopedia Universale Seda della pittura moderna, 1969, Milano, Vol. IV; Dizionario illustrato dei Pittori, Disegnatori e Incisori Italiani Moderni e Contemporanei Comanducci, Luigi Patuzzi Editore, Milano, 1974, Vol. III; G. Maschera, Piero Marussig. Dalla provincia mitteleuropea al Novecento Italiano, Ed Biblioteca d’arte, Trieste 1987; N. Colombo, C. Gianferrari, E. Pontiggia Piero Marussig, Catalogo generale, Silvana Editoriale, Milano 2006
