Arturo Martini (Treviso 1889 - Milan 1947)

Arturo Martini (Treviso 1889 – Milan 1947) first encountered modern art in 1909, when he met Gino Rossi, a leading figure of one of the first avant-garde experiments in Italy. In 1912 he was with Rossi again in Paris, where he met Modigliani and Boccioni. During those years Martini concentrated on  a plastic art that was formally autonomous and simultaneously loaded with symbolism.
He spent many years exploring the expressive potential of various approaches, from a formal purity to the incorporation of elements of Metaphysics.  The art of the past – from the Etruscans to the 15th century (Luciano Laurana, in particular) – held great attraction for him and his work was inspired by its lessons as well as by those of modern and contemporary art, amongst others the radical formal purity of Brancusi.  
In 1919 he became involved with the journal Valori Plastici which advocated a “return to order”. This led him to introduce elements of Fascist rhetoric in official art commissions. In his freer works, Martini expressed a lyricism that was never languid but always represented concretely in forms with a strong presence, notwithstanding the variety of plastic solutions he adopted over time. Accordingly, Fanciulla verso sera, dated 1919, La sete (1934) and the almost abstract Atmosfera di una testa (1944) display a profound continuity with the poetic world. In 1945 he published a pamphlet expressing his sense of a profound crisis in art and its purpose in the modern world.
Martini made a highly significant contribution to the international art scene of the 20th century, interacting with it throughout his life and never failing to associate what he learnt with the lessons of periods in the past, to which he often looked for inspiration.