ART
THE exhibition of modern Italian art at the Tate Gallery, held under the auspices of the Amici di Brera and the newly-formed Italian Institute in London, is strictly limited in its aims. Sixteen painters, two sculptors and Boccioni (by whom both sculpture and painting are shown) are included. Of these, only four were born after 1890. The selectors have laid emphasis on the two specifically Italian movements of this century—Futurism (which has not been so fully shown in this country since its disastrous debut in 1912) and the Scuola Metafisica—aral on a number of individual painters who refused to be subjugated by the official neo-classicism of the Fascist regime ; in short, the historical focal-points of the second and third decades of the century. This the exhibition does well—it conveys an altogether stronger impression than the small show seen in London four years ago—though it is hung a little confusingly.
Soffici and Severini are seen to be not inconsiderable artists, but it, is Boccioni, who died in 1916 at the age of thirty-four, who towers above the others in the group. Apart from his paint- ings, of which No. 9, with its great wheeling complex of pris- matically-coloured forms, is one of the most impressive, his sculptures suggest that his talent, had he lived, would have been infinitely productive. His Head of a Mother may be compared with the bronze Woman's Head of Picasso, done some four years earlier.
The large group of " metaphysical " paintings is very similar to that in the Biennale of 1948. No fewer than fifteen early de Chirico's are shown, including Morning Meditation (very closely related to his first efforts in the idiom) and the original version of the Disquieting Muses. Carat may be seen echoing de Chirico's invention after an appreciable time-lag, before finally passing to the neo-Giottos of later years. It would be hard to pretend that the unfamiliar Modiglianis shed any fresh light upon him—there is perhaps none to be shed—but who can resist his fully-developed, twentieth-century Sienneso manner ? Sironi and Campigli, whose thinking is conditioned by fresco and mosaic even when they are applying paint to canvas, have both been seen in London fairly recently. Their acquaintance may be renewed happily at the Tate. De Pisis is there at his most slight. One hopes that before long we may be given a full-scale exhibition of Italian sculpture, for the standard is high. In the meantime, to whet one's appetite, there is Martini's Girl Swimming Under Water (Martini's variousness can scarcely emerge from his three pieces) and some admirable sculptures by Mandt, the nervous surface tension of whose modelling emerges clearly. . M. H. MIDDLETON.
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