International studio (49.1913)

Current Art, Net tree and Foreign


Shaw Prize, National Academy of Design, 1913
SUMMER
placed more conclusively before the spectator. If
art is to assert itself as a vital, living organism, our
painters of established reputation must also cease
proffering us the same picture, or a palpable
variant, year after year, and if not, it should be the
business of the jury to place the ban upon such
perfunctory performances.
It is a pleasure to see the Pennsylvania Acad-
emy bestow its chief prize this season upon the
brilliant and captivating young Franco-American,
Frederick C. Frieseke, and we are similarly grate-
ful for the opportunity of enjoying the work of
such spirited and refreshing talents as George
Oberteuffer and Arthur B. Carles, Jr. More of
this independence and insight will go a long way
toward rectifying existent conditions not only in
Philadelphia but elsewhere, as well.
FOREIGN
I. Gaetano Previati. Shortly before the
feverish and noisy finale of the Armory exhibition
there was opened, in the most quiet and modest
manner, at the Catholic Club, the first display in
America of the work of the foremost living Italian
Divisionist painter, Gaetano Previati. There
was no sensationalism here. Comparatively few
people saw the pictures, or were even aware of
their presence in the city, and yet the event was
clearly one of capital artistic importance. Brought
to America under the auspices of the Previati
Society, of which Count Alberto Grubicy de

Dragon is president, the
collection numbered some
three-score examples of the
work of Italy’s leading ex-
ponent of the school which
owes its inception to that
indisputable master, the
late Giovanni Segantini.
Segantini was a realist
deeply tinged with mystic-
ism. Previati is a mystic
who reinforces his spiritual
vision through constant
contact with the world of
external reality. The su-
perior solidity of Segantini
gives place in the produc-
tion of Previati to a sub-
lime exaltation which ex-
presses itself in rhythmic
forms and responds sponta-
BY HELEN M. TURNER , J J, , , .
neously to the eternal throb
of life, light, and nature.
Previous to the Latin-British Exhibition at
Shepherd’s Bush last summer, the Anglo-Saxon
public knew little or nothing of the existence of the
Italian Divisionist painters, and it is a pleasure
to note that this ignorance has been at least par-
tially dispelled by the appearance of Previati,
Fornara, Cinotti, Bonomi, and others in London,
and the bringing of the Previati canvases to New
York. It is to Ranzoni and Cremona that modern
Italian art owes its present renaissance, and in the
early work of Previati not a little of the influence
of Cremona may be noted. Simultaneously with
Segantini, Previati, however, evolved the new
technique of Divisionism, the two artists exhibit-
ing the results of their initial efforts toward the
decomposition of tones in 1886 at the Brera, in
Milan.
The world already knows the heroic life story of
Segantini and his tragic death among the moun-
tains at Maloja, in the Engadine, which he painted
with such incomparable power and emotional in-
tensity. His fellow worker and co-founder of the
school has seldom exhibited in force outside of
Italy and Germany. It is the age-old appeal of
sacred legend that has claimed his attention, and
he has the distinction of being the first artist to
apply with success modern technical methods to
religious subject. The Annunciation, the Adora-
tion, the Passion, the Crucifixion—these are the
themes upon which the painter has concentrated
his extraordinary fluency of line, individuality of

LIV