Gino Rossi

Gino Rossi
(Venice, 1884 Treviso, 1947)
sadness
1910 (preparatory carton)
Gianese S. C., Venice (execution forties) mosaic, 66 x 50 cm
Inscriptions: bottom right "gianese s. c. / venice "; on the back paper tag “. . . 15 Mest [izia] / L. 120. 00 / 120. 00 "and plate on paper" XXIV Biennale. . . . of Venice 194 [8] "
The fascinating composition by Gino Rossi entitled Mestizia is documented by an oil-painted cartoon in 1910 and exhibited for the first time in room 5 (n. 73) at the 1911 Spring Exhibition of the Permanent Exhibition of Venetian art and industries. Pesaro. The work is fully affected by that Gauguinian climate experienced by Rossi, along with Arturo Martini, on their journey to Paris in 1907, then continued in Brittany. This composition shares with the well-known Fanciulla con fiore (1908) the conical cut, the rigor of the volumes of the body, of the arms, of the head and of the wide veil that covers it, resolving the composition in a crossing of linear elements that cancels any idea of ​​three-dimensionality, in favor of a flat compositional scheme, with clear-colored backgrounds and further underlined by a dark outline. Mestizia, along with other works painted by Gino Rossi between 1908 and 1912, seems to converse at a distance with Arturo Martini's bas-relief compositions precisely for this use of the linear, enveloping and defining schematization of figures with a strong volumetric synthesis, as in The lovers of 1920 (table 1. 3).
On the basis of the cardboard the mosaic was made, presented here (and, as documented by the plaques on the back, exhibited at the XXIV Biennale of art in 1948), probably made between the end of the 1920s and the 1930s by the company Cav . Angelo Gianese & Co., a company engaged at that time in the transposition into glass mosaic panels of cartoons prepared by painters for exhibitions, such as those by Guido Cadorin for Estate Fontana with mosaic panels and graffiti stucco for the XIII Biennale of Venice of 1922 (room 15, covered passage), immediately after exposed to Monza in 1923 and today disappeared. An activity celebrated in the catalog of the activity carried out by Cav. Angelo Gianese in 1927 (Mosaic Studio: Venetian glass mosaic in all styles, Ravenna style, in specialty, marble mosaics, floor in marble or vitreous mosaic).
Bibliography: unpublished; Gino Rossi 1974, n. 34 (card concerning the cardboard).
Valerio Terraroli

Author: Gino Rossi
Dimensions: 66x50
Year: 1910