International studio (17.1902)

Turin Exhibition

A girl’s bedroom

DESIGNED BY BARON KRAUSS
CARRIED OUT BY W. FEHLINGER

The first international

EXHIBITION OF MODERN
DECORATIVE ART AT TURIN.
BY DR. ENRICO THOVEZ.

It was in the winter of 1900 that a small
group of artists, architects, and art critics conceived
the idea of holding an exhibition of modern
decorative art at Turin. They agreed in thinking
that the work done during the last ten years by
artists of the various States of Europe and Ameiica,
inspired, no doubt, by the movement inaugurated
in England some forty years ago in every branch
of decorative and industrial art, was worthy of
being collected under one roof and shown to the
public as a whole; they agreed that the time had
come for proving to outsiders the fact that the
evolution of a modern style so eagerly longed for,
and pronounced by so many worthy souls to be
an impossibility, had not onlv become an accom-

plished act, but had already won the victory over
the cold and lifeless repetition of the academic
motives of a day gone by; they agreed that the
time had come for that modern style to receive the
stamp of official recognition.

The Committee of organisation had to contend
with difficulties, alike moral and material, before
their ideal could be realized. Their scheme was
treated as visionary, and they were accused of
being traitors to the grand traditions which had
been bequeathed to them by the decorative art of
the past in every country, but above all in Italy,
and they were reproached for showing want of
respect to the great masters of the past, in excluding
from their consideration work done in styles already
well known to all. The little band of organisers
had, however, the strength and constancy to
triumph over all opposition, and in the end they
had the satisfaction of seeing all their bitterest
enemies rally to their side, adopt the idea of the ex-
hibition, and approve the programme drawn up for it.

45 .