WORKS ON PAPER

Pietro PERSICALLI

Gaze into the abyss, c. 1913 - 15

Gouache on Havana cardboard

61,5 x 44,5 cm
72 x 55 x 2 cm (with the frame)

On the back, in pencil, non-autograph inscription of the artist: 11 1920 ca

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Literature

Mario Finazzi (ed.), Piero Persicalli. Abissi e seduzioni, Rome 2022, no. 41

Il Déco in Italia, l’eleganza della modernità, exhibition catalogue Forte di Bard, Valla d’Aosta, 2 December 2022 - 10 April 2023, p. 24.

Piero Persicalli began his studies at the Munich Academy in 1909, as a student of Habermann and Knirr. After a brief stay in Rome from 1912 to 1913, he moved to Vienna where he made his debut at the “Art Club”. In these early formative years, the artist became seduced by the more visionary aspects of Munich and Viennese secessionist aesthetics,[1] a key element that we find in all his later art.

In these same years he exhibited at the Salon des Independents in Paris, After the First World War he was present at the first Rome Biennale and at the Fiorentina Primavera in 1922 with Cardi by the sea and Contadina dei dintorni di Zara. Carlo Carrà wrote that Persicalli, “belongs to that category of our artists who have matured their art abroad.”[2] The year 1925 seems to have marked a peak of Piero Persicalli’s success, who became famous at a national level. In the first edition of Comanducci’s dictionary of painters (1934) he is described as a “lively colourist with a freely divisionist technique”.

This definition is spot-on. In his art, Piero Persicalli’s distinctive line of research seems split in two: on the one hand, a solid mastery of divisionist and late divisionist principles, and on the other, a markedly decorative and experimental approach. It is truly incredible how these two souls never strayed far apart, in fact, in Persicalli’s works they blend to such an extent that they seem a continuation of each other.

In some of Persicalli's works, especially those produced close to and during the First World War, the secessionist trait is more evident; in these years the exhibition opportunities were almost zero, but the creative activity of Persicalli did not slow down. The artist reflects carefully on what he saw in Vienna but filters its decorative power through his interest in marine fauna and flora.

This is perfectly expressed in the work presented here Gaze into the abyss, where, although inspired by Klimt, Persicalli has softened the geometric stylization and downplayed the abstraction to allow recognizability of the natural elements which inspired it: algae, marine plants, shells, aquatic reflections.

The dating of the work in question is based, in addition to the paper support prior to the date pencilled on the back, by the strong expressive power of the face which appears at the top left, possibly taken from the marble L'Orage by August Rodin (Fig. 1), which harks back to the Symbolist imagery of the early tens. Another citation which allows the work to be backdated is the jellyfish shape published in the volume by Ernst Haeckel, Die Natur als Kümstlerin, (Fig. 2) from 1913, very similar to the shape that Persicalli inserted here in the drawing. In this phase of the artist’s research, there is an evident intention to emphasize the more decorative aspect of his art, starting from Secessionist recollections, but in a less monumental way.

Fig. 1 - August Rodin, L’Orage, 1901, Marbel, Private collection

Fig. 2 - Ernst Haeckel, Die Natur als Kümstlerin,, Berlin, 1913

[1] Hugo von Habermann was among the founders of the Munich Secession. Heinrich Knirr participated in both the Munich and Viennese Secessions.

[2] Carlo Carrà, Pietro Persicalli, in Catalogo della VIIIa Esposizione Autunnale d’arte, the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Istituto G. Carducci, Como, 1924, op. cit., p. 39.

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