Studio: international art (57.1913)

Studio-Talk

regret at having left behind him the life of the
towns. Planting his easel in the open, he sets to
work painting, and continues with unflagging energy
until the last stroke for the day has been placed
on the canvas. With that same emotion that he
himself experiences and with an utter absence of
anything in the shape of technical trickery he
records the approach of a storm, the last streaks
of sunlight as the sun goes down in the west, the
cold, searching wind sweeping across a waste tract
of country, or a stream of icy water winding its way
down through the valley.

Among the works of Carozzi depicting the
weirder aspects of nature a notable example is
Lo Stagno delF Obblio (“The Pool of Oblivion”),
which was exhibited at the Venice International
Exhibition of 1910; with its shadowy reflections
of the ruins of deserted homesteads, it recalls Edgar
Allen Poe’s novel “The End of the House of
Usher.” There is something almost uncanny in the
solitude of this night scene, in which the herbage
seems to be all of a quiver and the mysterious
shadows are made to appear transparent. The
feeling of awe to which this work gives expression is
characteristic of the artist’s work, and we are con-
scious of it especially in his pictures of the high
mountains. The accom-
panying reproductions of
some of them will serve to
show that the artist has not
been content with a mere
transcript of some scene
which has passed before his
eyes, or with baldly record-
ing certain effects of light
which he has encountered,
but that he has striven to
communicate some of that
feeling which he himself
has experienced in presence
of the sublime, majestic
aspects of nature. The
introduction of figures,
human and animal, into
some of these paintings is
always well considered.

The figures, though usually
small, are never placed in
the composition as a piece
of unimportant staffage;
on the contrary, their in-
troduction is dictated by a
sense of rhythm ; they are

never without character, and they serve by their
proportions to accentuate the magnitude of the
mountains as well as to give the picture the neces-
sary feeling of space. At times the figures are
placed boldly in the foreground, especially when
they stand out against the light and are as it were
enveloped in it.

The works of Carozzi of which reproductions
accompany these notes represent, of course, only
a small part of his achievements as a painter, but
they are sufficient to give the reader some idea of
the qualities which, to repeat the words of Sgr. Vittorio
Pica in his note on Carozzi’s “individual ” show at
this year’s Venice Exhibition of Art, nowdrawing to a
close, make this Milanese artist “worthy of being
singled out as one of the most confident, most
conscientious, and most personal representatives
at the present day of that Lombard school of
landscape painting which possesses such noble and
glorious traditions.” L. Br.

VIENNA.—It is not generally known that
some of Mr. Charles Mackintosh’s best
work is to be seen in Vienna. Among
other examples a music-room which the
eminent architect and artist designed for Herr

“1 kiori della neve” (ti-ib flowers of the snow)

BY G. CAROZZI

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