#vittoriozecchin — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #vittoriozecchin, aggregated by home.social.
-
"One Thousand and One Nights," (portion), Vittorio Zecchin, 1914.
Zecchin (1878-1947) is best remembered as a designer for Murano glass; in fact, he's hailed as the first Modernist glass designer in Italy.
He worked in other media as well, including glass mosaics (in a very Vienna Secessionist style), but this is from his brief flirtation with painting. In 1914 he was commissioned to create a mural for the dining room of Venice's Terminus Hotel. Alas, the Terminus fell victim to bombings in WWII, but the murals were removed and are now in museums and private collections.
The style is an important transition from more traditional to more modern. It's plainly representational but done in a very 2-D way, with objects and people's clothes being flat patches of pattern, like a collage or applique project. It's intensely pleasing to the eye and I wish I could see the whole work together again in a single room. Reportedly it's a scene from the tale of Aladdin, with courtiers bringing gifts in preparation for the wedding.
From a private collection.
-
"The Thousand and One Nights," Vittorio Zecchin, 1914.
Zecchin (1878-1947) is mostly remembered today as an innovative glassmaker, but he also painted and made tapestries.
Born in Venice, to a glassmaking family, he worked some in glass but abandoned it for a time to study art. He became fascinated by the work of the Viennese Secession movement and later by Art Nouveau, and traveled to Vienna and befriended Gustav Klimt.
In 1914 he released a series of paintings, illustrating the story of Aladdin and his entourage as they travel to the Sultan to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage. This is now regarded as his best work as a painter. A series of 12 paintings, it was meant to decorate a hotel dining room (!) but now is broken up, half of them in the Ca' Pesaro Palace in Venice, and the rest in private hands.
Zecchin later returned to glassmaking and became artistic director of the Venetian glass firm V.S.M. Cappellin Venini & C., winning acclaim for his works with clean lines and simple shapes, but exquisite color.
An interesting aspect of this image is how it could be taken for a collage, or applique, or a patchwork quilt; his treatment of pattern is very two-dimensional.
From a private collection.