Italico Brass

Italico Brass (born December 14, 1870 in Gorizia , † August 16, 1943 in Venice ) was an Italian painter and art collector of German origin.

Life

Brass moved to Munich in 1887 . At the art academy he studied with Karl Raupp . Under the influence of the painter Wilhelm Leibl and the Barbizon School (which had exhibited its works in Munich in 1869 and 1879), Brass decided in 1888 to continue his studies in Paris . His teachers there were William Adolphe Bouguereau , Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens . He interrupted his Paris studies by traveling to Veneto . His first masterpiece was created in Chioggia : Chioggiotti alla briscola (People from Chioggia playing cards), with which he was able to draw attention to himself in the Paris Salon of 1893. In 1895 he married Lina Rebecca Vidgoff (a Russian medical student) in Paris and moved with her (in the year of the first Biennale ) to Venice, where he spent most of his life. There he created many Venetian vedutas , including the painting Il ponte del Redentore (The Bridge of the Redeemer), which, according to Anthony Ozturk, the American writer Ezra Pound refers to in his poem Per Italico Brass . Brass and Pound lived in the same part of Venice, in Dorsoduro .

In the 1908 poem dedicated to Brass it says, among other things: Some see but color ... or how composed the white of sheep clouds ere the wolf of storm that lurks behind the hills shall ... hurl tumultuous on the peace before. But I see more (Some only see the color ... or how the white fleecy clouds are arranged before the wolf of the storm lurking behind the hills rushes violently on the peaceful sight. But I see more). It remains to be seen whether the poet, in the role of the observer, with the I-see-more means the wolf of the storm or something third behind clouds and storms; in any case, he expects from the visual arts something other than just a surface that is true to reality or that fades in color. Pound criticized both photographic realism and the superficial impressionism , which was limited to color tones . He may have liked the fact that Brass can be classified between the two art styles, because he had moved from the realism of Raupp's landscape painting to flatness and color, of which Il ponte del Redentore is a good example.

Brass exhibited regularly at the Biennale . In 1910 she dedicated a solo exhibition of 43 works to the painter. That established its international reputation. Among his followers was the writer, art critic and organizer of many art exhibitions Ugo Ojetti (1871-1946). Brass was represented at the 1911 International Art Exhibition in Rome. In 1911 and 1912 his pictures were shown at a traveling exhibition (Budapest, Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, Paris). He also presented his works overseas, e.g. B. in Buenos Aires and San Francisco, where he received the gold medal in 1915 for the picture Il ponte sulla laguna . In 1914 he had a solo exhibition in the gallery of the art dealer Georges Petit (1856–1920) in Paris and in 1918 an exhibition of his works dedicated to Venice in the Galleria Pesaro in Milan.

In 1915, the Italian High Command gave Brass the task of documenting military events on the Isonzo in the area of ​​the Third Army (under the command of the 2nd Duke of Aosta ) . This is how his diario pittorico , his picture diary , came about . He was not the only “painter-soldier”; Anselmo Bucci , Aldo Carpi and others also painted for the army. In 1917 Brass published his book Sulle orme di San Marco (In the footsteps of San Marco). Exhibitions in 2008 and 2009 in the castles of Udine and Gorizia with around 50 works were dedicated to the theme of La Grande Guerra vista da Italico Brass (the Great War - First World War - from the point of view of Italico Brass).

In 1920 Brass bought the Scuola Vecchia dell 'Abbazia di Santa Maria della Misericordia (Old School of the Convent of Saint Mary of Grace) in Venice (in the Cannaregio district ), which was damaged in the war, and carried out the renovation of the building. Brass was a member of the Commission on Public Buildings and the Board of Directors for Venice's Municipal Museums in the interwar period. He was also a member of the scientific committee that prepared the exhibitions for Tizian (1935), Jacopo Tintoretto (1937) and Paolo Veronese (1939). In 1935 the Biennale showed a retrospective on the artistic development of Brass.

Brass was also a respected connoisseur and collector of paintings from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, which he exhibited in the restored Scuola Vecchia. His collection included works by Bonifacio Veronese (1487–1553), Tiziano Vecellio (approx. 1490 - 1576), Lambert Sustris (around 1515 - 1591), Jacopo Palma jun. (1548 - 1628), Giulio Carpioni (1613 - 1678), Valerio Castello (1624 - 1659), Alessandro Magnasco (1667 - 1749), Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682 - 1754), Francesco Guardi (1712 - 1793) and Ubaldo Gandolfi ( 1728-1781). Brass compiled around 50 paintings by Alessandro Magnasco without knowing the authorship in any case, which was only established by the Austrian poet, translator and art historian Benno Geiger. That is why Brass and Geiger are sometimes referred to as the "rediscoverers" of Magnascos. After the artist's death, the Brass collection was distributed to many museums and auctions, e. B. Metropolitan Museum of Art and Cleveland Museum of Art .

In 1942 Brass participated (together with Mirko Artico) as a set designer in the production of the film Canal Grande by Andrea di Robilant. Italico Brass is the grandfather of the director Giovanni Brass (whom Italico nicknamed Tinto after the painter Tintoretto). In Gorizia there is a street named after Italico Brass.

Works (selection)

• Chioggiotti alla briscola (People from Chioggia playing cards), 1893 or earlier (exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1893 and at the first Biennale in 1895)
• Ritratto di mia moglie (Portrait of my wife), 1896 (presented at the Paris World Exhibition 1900 )
• Via crucis , 1899
• Casolare in Campagna (Houses in the Countryside), 1903
• Sacca Fisola , 1904
• Il ponte di barche alla Salute , 1904
• Rosa appassita ( withered rose, portrait of a Venetian lady), 1905 or earlier
• Il ponte dei Greci (the bridge of the Greeks, near the Greek Orthodox Church of San Giorgio in the Castello district ), 1905
• Campo Santa Margherita , 1906
• Il ponte del Redentore , 1908 or earlier (exhibited in the Ca 'Pesaro Venice in 1909)
• Il ponte sulla laguna , 1909 or earlier
• Sulla spiaggia al Lido (on the beach of the Lido di Venezia ), 1909
• Campanile in costruzione (the reconstruction of Markus Tower ), 1909
• Piazza San Marco , 1909
• Casotto di carnevale in campo Santa Margherita (Carnival booth in Santa Margherita Square), 1910
• Traghetto alla Dogana (ferry across the Grand Canal between St. Mark's Square and the Dogana di Mare customs house), 1911
• La festa dei morti (All Souls' Day), 1912 or earlier
• Le ricamatrici (the embroiderers), 1912
• Maschere a San Barnaba (Masked in the square in front of the Church of San Barnaba), 1913
• Inauguration del campanile di San Marco (inauguration of the rebuilt St. Mark's Tower ), 1914
• Fireworks over the lagoon, 1914 (Musée d'Orsay)
• Sconfinamento dei bersaglieri a Treponti presso Cervignano (border crossing of the Bersaglieri at Treponti near Cervignano ), 1915
• Soldati a Palmanova , 1915
• La bandiera d'Italia a San Giusto (the flag of Italy attached to San Giusto , the Cathedral of Trieste), 1916
• Assalto di notte presso Monfalcone (night attack near Monfalcone ), 1916
• Il ponte di Peuma bombardato (the shelled bridge of Peuma over the Isonzo)
• Sulle orme di San Marco (In the footsteps of San Marco), a collection of war pictures and explanations, 1917
• Portrait of a Venetian boy with a doll, 1920 or earlier
• Ritratto d'uomo con cravatta (Portrait of a Man in a Tie), 1925

literature

• L. Brosch, The Paintings of Italico Brass in The Studio , Volume 46, 1909
• Guido Perocco, Italico Brass, 1870-1943 , Padua 1964
• Maria Masau Dan, Italico Brass , Electa, Milan 1991
• General artist lexicon (AKL). The visual artists of all times and peoples , KG Saur, Munich and Leipzig 1991ff
• Rosella Mamoli Zorzi (ed.), Venezia 1908: Ezra Pound e Italico Brass , Edizione della Laguna, Mariano del Friuli 2004
• Annalia Delneri (also Del Neri, ed.), Italico Brass, reporter della Grande Guerra , Edizioni della Laguna, Mariano del Friuli 2008

Individual evidence

1. ↑ not related to the painter Hans Brass .
2. ↑ a ship bridge (which is rebuilt every year for the festival of the Redeemer) to the Church of the Redeemer (chiesa del Redentore) on the island of Giudecca in the south of Venice; here ( Memento of the original from August 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the reference to a French page. 
3. ↑ Anthony Ozturk, Ezra Pound and Visual Art , Dissertation, University of Oxford., 1989
4. ↑ Some think that Pound is referring to the painting Il ponte sulla laguna , which supposedly - it cannot be seen in the picture - depicts a ship bridge between the promenade Fondamenta nuove and the cemetery island of San Michele.
5. ↑ Michael John King (ed.), Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound , Faber and Faber, London 1977; the poem is also in the essay Ezra Pound's Whistler by Rebecca Beasley in American Literature , Volume 74, No. 3, September 2002.
6. ↑ So an impressionism, if it is only superficial.
7. ^ Editor of the art magazine Dedalo .
8. ↑ Marco Pizzo (ed.), Pittori-soldato della Grande Guerra , Istituto per la storia del Risorgimento italiano, Rome 2005.
9. ↑ The names of the centuries in Italian take some getting used to for non-Italians, for example Cinquecento means the 16th, Ottocento the 19th century.
10. ↑ not to be confused with Paolo Veronese .
11. ^ Benno Geiger, Alessandro Magnasco , Paul Cassirer, Berlin 1914; Brass drew Geiger's attention to Magnasco.
12. ^ A provisional ship bridge over the Grand Canal to the church of Santa Maria della Salute .
13. ^ Square and church in Dorsoduro , a district of Venice
14. ↑ City in Friuli Venezia Giulia, in NE Italy.
15. ↑ Peuma is a place near Gorizia.
16. ↑ the book also contains texts by Alessandra Brass, a granddaughter of Italico, and Mary de Rachewiltz , a daughter of Ezra Pound; it was created after a conference on the subject of pound, Brass e la pittura a Venezia nel 1908 in January 2004.