A masterpiece among the many on display is theSelf Portrait (1905), dizzying work of pen, in which the young Martini presents himself as the perfect figure of a dark handsome man, with a black bow tie that looks like a flower and a butterfly, and a tiny naked woman with moth wings, leaning on a table designed by the artist, the one for EA Poe's Berenice.
Those for Poe's stories, begun in 1904, are Martini's best-known illustrations, which were never published in volume alive the artist, but only in 1985, in a sumptuous editorial guise, by Franco Maria Ricci. Six of these are exhibited, including two large ones – ink nocturnes whose lights light up the white of the paper – dedicated to Hop Frog, with the horrid holocaust of the gloomy jester – and William Wilson, in which the artist himself doubles in his menacing doppelgänger.
Next in importance, The poem of the Shadowse, a series that includes about thirty masked faces in all shapes, which evoke the Venetian carnival, the black masks of thieves and conspirators of the past, the veiled female faces of mystery novels, all quickly improvised with brush and ink as random “Roschach spots” which by satanic prodigy take the form of faces that look at us boldly from the holes of their masking. Martini became the favorite artist of the notorious Marchesa Casati, and director, costume designer, property master and portraitist for her and her amazing Venetian masquerade parties. In this gallery the carnival is transformed from a dream into a nightmare.
A series of pencils and drawings testifies to the collaboration that Martini had in 1905 with "La Lettura", the literary supplement of Corriere della Sera. It should not be forgotten that it was Martini who illustrated Marinetti's magazine "Poesia". From futurism, cubism and surrealism Martini was not immune, as the watercolor clearly shows Aurélia, illustration for the poem by Gérard de Nerval. From 1928 to 1936, in fact, Martini lived in Paris, creating a particular genre of "black painting" and "sky-colored painting" which he thought was the culmination of his art. In reality, his greatest creation, both in daring visionary and technical extraordinaryness is perhaps the cycle of Mysteries, from 1915, very refined lithographs which are truly dreamlike apparitions that art had never been able to conceive as such, and which precede everything that surrealism will be able to invent in art, photography and cinema.
Alberto Martini (Oderzo 1876-Milan 1954) was one of the most original and bizarre European illustrators of the early twentieth century. His greatness and inimitableness consists above all in the virtuosic ability to use the pen and Indian ink with such a minute and obsessive technique that it makes the tables he draws seem like a work of engraving at the service of a visionary imagination . An imagination so original that it transcended the suggestions of the literary works he illustrated – Poe, Shakespeare, Mallarmé, the most important – thus placing himself at the same time as an epigue of decadentism and symbolism and an absolute precursor of surrealism. In his auspices he knew himself to be the initiator of an art movement which he imagined would come in the future and whose name he still did not know. Added to this is the character of his person, aristocratic in his presumptions, provincial and cosmopolitan, dandy maniacally elegant in dress, bizarre and unfriendly, haughty in his behavior, proud of the halo of seducer and refined sex addict with whom he was able to surround himself.
In addition to the catalog of works, a volume will also be presented, entitled Vittorio Pica and Alberto Martini – the thirty-year partnership between a critic and an artist (ed. D'Arte), dedicated to the long and important artistic and intellectual association of Martini with Vittorio Pica (Naples 1864 - Milan 1930), the greatest popularizer in Italy of both modern European art and graphics, and French decadent literature which is inextricably linked to the previous ones. Martini's discoverer, mentor and protector, Pica was one of the founders of the Venice Biennale, and general secretary from 1920 to 1926, when he was brutally torpedoed by fascism. It was then that Martini repaid his debt by launching a subscription in works among all the European artists Pica celebrated which was then sold at auction for the benefit of the Neapolitan critic.
ALBERTO MARTINI. MASKS AND SHADOWS
Until 28 February 2022 LAOCOON GALLER 2a-4 Ryder Street, London
