Studio: international art (88.1924)

VIENNA—VENICE

known in Germany as well as in Austria,
and if the War had not broken her con-
tract with one of the leading London
theatres, for which she was engaged to
design the costumes, decorations, etc., no
doubt her name would be known also in
other countries. Her postcards, posters,
advertisements, figures on boxes, illustra-
tions of children, and specially her sap-
phire blue and purple coloured fantastic
miniatures on parchment—all show the
work of a genial artist of delicate sensibility
and exceptional gifts. 000
Francis C. Fuerst.

VENICE.—The individual display of
the decorative art of Umberto Bel-
lotto was one of the attractive features of
this year's Biennial at Venice. It was a
repose in itself to come from the rooms
filled with paintings and sculpture to this
little room of his art, looking across green
spaces and canals, and filled with his
exquisite creations in ceramics and " ferro-
battuto." Bellotto, who has become one
of the personalities who count in modern
art, is, to a great extent, self-taught. His
father was one of those artisans to whom
in the past Venice owed her strength; he
had a small smithy with two or three lads
to help. Working here, too, with the iron
under his hand, Umberto formed to him-
self a great ambition—to restore this art
of " ferro-battuto " (beaten iron) which
had become neglected, vulgarised, to what
it was once in the great days of art creation
in Venice. 00000
His dream as a lad has been realised ;
by sheer hard work and merit he has
succeeded. In 1910 he was placed over
the special school of " ferro-battuto " in
the Paduan School of industrial art. To
go over his house, his studio and workshop
—as I was able to do this year at Venice—
is like visiting the " bottega " of a master
of the old times. Here I saw iron and
coloured glass—the strongest and the most
fragile material—welded together into
things of exquisite form and colour ; and
lamps, screens of Byzantine-Gothic de-
sign, vases, plates and ceramics, things of
exquisite design, which in the Venice
Biennial found at once their appreciative
public. 0 0 0 0 0

But this did not satisfy me. I wanted

to see not only the product, finished and
perfect, but the actual working; and
Bellotto took me down to the workshop,
where half-a-dozen anvils were ringing
with the blows, and I saw out of the glow-
ing molten iron a rose emerge, with its
curling petals and dainty leaves (I hold it
in my hand as I write) shaped out from
the white-hot metal by the master's own
practised hand. Here at least in modern
art we touch the solid ground of craftsman-
ship—no trickery, no scamping possible
here ; and Bellotto is now known in more
continents than one, has had commissions
for palaces in Egypt and patrons in
America, and can work for his pleasure as
well as profit. When I was in Venice the
municipality had decided to seek for some-
thing better for her streets than the in-
artistic electric supports, and had come to
Bellotto to help them; that same evening
after my visit to his workshop and studio,
I passed out of the Piazza, with its crowded
cafes, beneath the Clock Tower, into the
Merceria, and saw what he had done, just
set in its place—a thing shapely, delicate,
aerial, but yet strong with the force of
those blows I had seen upon the glowing
metal, supple and plastic as clay, but
strong as iron. S. B.

DETAIL OF IRON SCREEN OF
DANTE'S TOMB AT RAVENNA
BY UMBERTO BELLOTTO
293