Villa Malaparte
The Villa Malaparte is a villa of the writer Curzio Malaparte (1898–1957) on the east coast of the Italian island of Capri .
The building is still often attributed to the architect Adalberto Libera , who indeed worked out a complete project on behalf of Malaparte, but the villa was ultimately completed according to designs modified by the client without Libera being involved.
history
Curzio Malaparte had the two-storey Villa Malaparte built between 1938 and 1942 on a protruding rock of the Punta del Massullo above the sea. Malaparte wanted to build a “casa come me”, “a house like me”: “dreary, dura, severa” - sad, tough and strict.
He bought the Capo Massullo , five kilometers from the center of Capri, for 12,000 lire (about 2200 Reichsmarks ), although construction was not allowed there. But through his relationship with Mussolini's son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano - Italy's foreign minister from 1936 to 1943 - he received a building permit. Construction began in 1938.
According to an anecdote , Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is said to have paid a visit in the early summer of 1942 and asked the landlord whether he had already bought the house as it was or whether he had designed and built it himself. The latter is said to have replied - untruthfully - that he had already bought it as it was; and with one arm movement showing the surroundings, the romantic beauty of Capri and the picturesque Gulf of Salerno : "I designed the landscape."
Guests at the Villa Malaparte included Jean Cocteau , Alberto Moravia , Albert Camus and the communist leader Palmiro Togliatti , among others .
On a trip to China, Malaparte fell ill with cancer, flew to Rome, became a member of the Communist Party and converted to Catholicism. Then shortly before his death in 1957, he bequeathed the villa to the communist youth of the People's Republic of China , which led to a long-standing legal battle. In the end the villa came back to the family; since 1972 it has been owned by the Fondazione Giorgio Ronchi.
In the 1980s, the Fondazione made the house available to the LMU's Chair for Art Education under the direction of Hans Daucher . His seminars held there enabled students to live and work here at youth hostel prices.
The Villa Malaparte is currently occupied by Ralph Jentsch, administrator of George Grosz's estate and editor of a new edition of Malaparte's works.
On June 9, 1998, Malaparte's 100th birthday, the dilapidated house was restored and has since attracted curious people from all over the world and fashion photographers. Karl Lagerfeld made an entire illustrated book with photos of the house. The villa was used as a film set in Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris ( The Contempt with Michel Piccoli and Brigitte Bardot ) as early as 1963 .
architecture
The 10 meter wide and about 50 meter long two-storey building with a flat roof stands on a hard-to-reach rock 32 meters above the sea and catches the eye from a distance with its red paint. The incidence of light, the lines of sight and escape lines are just as spectacular as the access to the banisterless roof terrace. On top, a curved white wall offers some wind and privacy protection.
Southwest in front of the house is a ground terrace, from which you can walk down about 100 steps to the sea. You can reach it from Capri city via the Via Pizzolungo coming in the descent after passing a gate. A small landing connects with the higher entrance on the ground floor.
Inside, a salon with an area of one hundred square meters forms the center. The windows are distributed over the facade in such a way that they allow the most beautiful views. For example, a small window at the end of the fireplace gives a view of the sea.
The house also has a library, a bedroom for the master of the house, one for his respective favorite, a chamber for her maid and an apartment with four rooms for guests.
literature
in alphabetical order
- Bruce Chatwin: The Dream of the Restless . Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1998. ISBN 3-596-13729-2
- Giallo Libera-Malaparte . In: “L'Architettura, cronache e storia” 443 (September 1992), pp. 594-595 (Italian).
- Christina Haberlik: 50 classics. 20th century architecture . Hildesheim: Gerstenberg Verlag, 2001. ISBN 3-8067-2514-4
- Karl Lagerfeld: Casa Malaparte. Steidl, Göttingen 1998. ISBN 3-88243-564-X
- Petra Liebl-Osborne: "A house like me" The Casa Malaparte on Capri . HypoVereinsbank, 1999. ISBN 3-930184-20-6
- Michael McDonough: Malaparte - a house like me . With a foreword by Tom Wolfe. Translated by Friedrich Mader. Knesebeck, Munich 2000. ISBN 3-89660-063-X
- Salvatore Pisani: Curzio Malaparte's Villa on Capri - A self-portrait in stone . In: Die Gartenkunst 5 (2/1993), pp. 374–377.
- Vittorio Savi, J. Bostik: Orfica, surrealistica: Casa Malaparte a Capri e Adalberto Libera . In: Lotus International. No. 60, pp. 6-31 (1988).
Web links
- Looking through the fireplace in a scene from the film Le Mepris
- V. Savi: Orphic, surrealistic. Casa Malaparte in Capri and Adalberto Libera (English), accessed October 1, 2019.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Casa Malaparte. (PDF) Retrieved May 30, 2016 .
- ↑ Casa Malaparte. In: ArchiDiAP. Retrieved May 30, 2016 .
- ^ Curzio Malaparte: The skin. Stahlberg Verlag , Karlsruhe 1950, p. 193.
- ^ Laudation for Daucher on the occasion of the Schwabinger Art Prize 2011
Coordinates: 40 ° 32 ′ 49 ″ N , 14 ° 15 ′ 33 ″ E