Having arrived in Rome from Turin in 1909, Attilio Selva was introduced, through Felice Carena, to the refined collector of antiquities Angelo Signorelli, who, together with his wife, regularly welcomed archaeologists, intellectuals and artists such as Angelo Zanelli and Ivan Meštrović into their salon. The former was then working on the large Frieze of the Base for the Altare della Patria, characterized by a vigorous Hellenizing plasticity whose rhythm and cadence found expression in the musculature of the bodies. This established and reformulated a path toward emancipation from the normative conventions of the academies, making Zanelli an important reference for younger artists: among those who worked in his studio were Antonio Maraini and Publio Morbiducci.

The great Serbian sculptor Ivan Meštrović also played a leading role in the renewal of Italian sculpture. His inspiration, drawn from the archaic sculpture of the great ancient civilizations, took the form of massive, highly stylized figures that triumphed at the 1911 International Exhibition in Rome, both for their plasticity, marked by decorative austerity and rigid formalism, and for their rigorous decorative vocabulary. Vittorio Pica traced this language back to "the models of that stylized archaism of Assyrian and Egyptian sculptors" (Vittorio Pica, L'Arte mondiale a Roma nel 1911, Bergamo, 1913, p. CXLVI).

Alongside the works of contemporary artists, Signorelli's collection naturally included a substantial group of Roman and Etruscan archaeological artefacts. Together with his contacts with archaeologists and enthusiasts of antiquity, these exerted an undeniable fascination on the artists in his circle, particularly on those searching for an archaic language: "By day one goes to visit Michelangelo. On Sundays one discovers the Etruscans at Tarquinia. The soul is freed. Form reveals itself" (O. Vergani, "Attilio Selva o l'artiere tra i giganti," in Corriere della Sera, 11 December 1934).

Fig. 1

Idolo, 1913

The influence of the sculpture of ancient peoples undoubtedly contributed to the modernization of sculpture, above all through the primacy of volume over virtuoso and ornamental effects. One need only think of Casorati's terracottas, all executed around 1914, such as Maschera nera, Maschera rossa and Ada, which presented a genuine alternative model to the entire Liberty sculpture tradition derived from Bistolfi.

The vitality of this new orientation, inspired by archaic forms, nourished Attilio Selva's work during the years in which the Roman Secession was taking shape. Beginning with Idolo (1913) [Fig. 1] and continuing with Sfinge (1914), Selva increasingly developed a stripped-down and austere conception of beauty. Above all, he demonstrated a tendency to represent the female nude through the movements of dance, allowing him to break free, on the one hand, from the structural constraints imposed by the academic nude and, on the other, from the mechanization of Futurism. This enabled him to achieve a measured and balanced movement, in contrast to the uncontrolled coup de fouet characteristic of floral Art Nouveau.

The reworking of the hieratic poses assumed by Selva's models during these years seemed to belong to a choreographic or ritual tradition of extremely ancient origin, coinciding with that need for elemental simplicity and absoluteness that connected antiquity with the present. Between 1919 and 1921, Selva would even travel to Egypt to execute the portrait and medals bearing the effigy of King Fuad. Certainly, the image of the Sphinx played a role in the conception, a few years later, of the Fontana delle Cariatidi in Piazza dei Quiriti in Rome (1928).

The formal culmination of these years is the large sculpture Ritmi, executed by Selva between 1913 and 1914, undoubtedly one of the works that, together with Enigma, received the greatest critical acclaim and was regarded as an expression of the artist's full maturity. The female nude, characterized by a severe formal conception, is depicted seated, with the left leg extended to create a broad triangular opening, almost forming a pediment, while the right leg is folded backward. The frontal twist of the torso emphasizes the dynamic movement of the arms, raised and brought over the head to form another arch framing the profile. The classicism evident in the treatment of the muscular masses nevertheless tempers the extreme linearization of the pose, finding an elegant point of balance in the inclination of the torso toward the right.

Selva's entire experience within the Secession led him to develop a refined synthesis between his constant attention to the rhythm of volumes, firmly rooted in classicism, and this new cadence of poses that transcended the habitual static quality of the obsolete female nudes of the preceding decade. It was precisely with reference to Selva's works that Antonio Maraini began to speak of a reformed classicism, understood more as an expression of the national spirit than as submission to the codified rules of academic art (Antonio Maraini, "Cronache d'Arte. Un'esposizione di B.A. al Pincio," in La Tribuna, 27 May 1918).

The work was selected by Marcello Piacentini, who was commissioned to design the installation of the Third Roman Secession exhibition in 1915 [Fig. 2-3], and placed in the apse of the vestibule decorated with arabesques in gold. Traces of the original gilding can still be seen on the sculpture today. The use of pigment, both on the sculpture and in the wall decorations, reflected Piacentini's "Viennese" enthusiasm. Selva's sculpture, with its strong architectural character, therefore occupied a privileged role in the overall exhibition design, becoming the focal point of an installation so strongly oriented toward a Viennese atmosphere that it prompted hasty anti-German reactions among some critics, while, on the contrary, receiving an excellent response from the public.

Francesco Parisi

Fig. 2 Catalog cover III Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Secessione, Roma 1915	Fig. 3 Ritmi Photograph from the catalog III Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Secessione, Roma 1915