Studio: international art (64.1915)

Studio- Talk

Decorative Art at Turin in 1902, where he exhibited
hors-concours. For several years he remained
sequestered in the solitude of his atelier, devoting
himself to his ambitious ideal—the search for per-
fection. It was only in 1906 that, yielding to the
advice of his friends, he again made an appearance,
this time at the Milan Exhibition. His rare gifts
manifested themselves now even more clearly than
before; and here, as in Paris, he was awarded the
Grand Prix International. No hindrance could
avail to turn this man of ardent will from the path
marked out for him, and his art continued to
develop with an astonishing fulness.

I think I can divine one of the secrets of such a
constancy of aim, and that is the unswerving faith
of this silent revolutionary in the rights of modernity
—a modernity the exigencies of which make them-
selves more felt every day. Not that Quarti
ignores the past or despises it, but he has no
thought of it when he designs and composes;
ancient and modern masterpieces, both Italian and
foreign, are not unfamiliar to him, but without
allowing himself to dwell too much upon them he
has instinctively grasped their essentials. It may
be that he owes to this transient comprehension
the mobile facility of inventiveness
and the vivacity of accent which
render more certain and impart
greater breadth to his own indi-
vidual methods. Nevertheless
there remains a definite originality
which, possessing itself of essential
principles, is incapable of enthral-
ment by them, but improves upon
or mayhap forgets them in the pro-
duction of a new realisation. There
is also in the compositions of Quarti
no evidence of a juxtaposition of
heterogeneous elements nor that
medley of reminiscence and bor-
rowed traits which makes what
should be a synthetic creation
merely a work of fastidious com-
pilation. The immediate influence
of this style or that school is
nowhere apparent in his art. All
is invented, even to the smallest
details, and with an abundance
of variety of which only one who
has seen his entire production
can adequately take stock.

Quarti’s pieces of furniture
294

always very practical and of irreproachable execu-
tion, are logical organisms. An inward and inherent
necessity creates the form, of which the decorative
masses are disposed with a perfect equilibrium,
and are developed with an almost austere sobriety.
Nothing is superadded, nothing is superfluous,
but the whole design flows naturally from a single
conception—all is subordinated to a generative idea,
like a body supported by its vertebrae. Besides
retaining in his contours an admirable plastic
fulness and a comfortable solidity, Quarti exer-
cises a sensitive discrimination in questions of
harmony of tone, of the combination of diverse
materials and the employment of various kinds ot
woods. These woods are fashioned in perfect
accord with their intrinsic characters and the result
is that all the constructive and pictorial qualities of
which they are susceptible are realised to the
utmost. Then the addition of ingeniously con-
trived incrustations (he was the first in our country
to adopt this device, in the use of which no one
has surpassed him) of coloured glass, flashing
crystal, ornaments in chased or cast metal, and
lastly little architectural motifs which now reveal
themselves, now modestly shrink back in the
total concordance, make the works of this crafts-