If we cast our gaze momentarily on the art world of Australia in the 1950s we encounter an avid cast of painterly myth-makers: Boyd, Perceval, Nolan, Tucker, Gleeson, Olsen, Vassilieff, Fairweather; these are Australia’s official ‘modernist’ canon. What unites these artists most, in retrospect, is the almost anarchic temperement of their painting; oil pant flickered and flew, scumbled, dribbled and encased itself onto their canvases. The pictorial mood was essentially expressionist, and resonant with strong social concerns.
Martich - Severi’s paintings of the 1940s are not far removed from this creative ethos. Looking at his Jug With Flowers from 1947, one is immediately reminded of John Perceval’s intensely rhythmic canvases. The common element here is a love of Van Gogh. The Dutch Master had a profound impact on the emigre from Fiume, as he did on many of his Australian contempories. The influence can still be felt in Baccanti and re - emerges as late as 1965 in the painterly abstraction of works in vitreous enamel.
Perhaps if Martich -Severi had continued in this vein he may have been embraced and celebrated by his adopted homeland, just as Dannilla Vassilief and Leon Kossoff had been. His essentially graphic aesthetic spirit, however, as revealed by these drawings for sculpture, was leading him in a new direction; one closer in heart to his Italian lineage.This lineage gained its power and grace from its graphic release and formal restraint.
There is a highly developed sense of tension in Itallian art, a legacy of the ancient Hellenes, which Martich-Severi certainly inherited. He became, then, an anomoly in the Australian painting landscape. A new nation attempting to forge its myths and identity would have difficulty accepting into its story the metaphysical flowering of an art from another nation.
Martich - Severi’s paintings of the 1940s are not far removed from this creative ethos. Looking at his Jug With Flowers from 1947, one is immediately reminded of John Perceval’s intensely rhythmic canvases. The common element here is a love of Van Gogh. The Dutch Master had a profound impact on the emigre from Fiume, as he did on many of his Australian contempories. The influence can still be felt in Baccanti and re - emerges as late as 1965 in the painterly abstraction of works in vitreous enamel.
Perhaps if Martich -Severi had continued in this vein he may have been embraced and celebrated by his adopted homeland, just as Dannilla Vassilief and Leon Kossoff had been. His essentially graphic aesthetic spirit, however, as revealed by these drawings for sculpture, was leading him in a new direction; one closer in heart to his Italian lineage.This lineage gained its power and grace from its graphic release and formal restraint.
There is a highly developed sense of tension in Itallian art, a legacy of the ancient Hellenes, which Martich-Severi certainly inherited. He became, then, an anomoly in the Australian painting landscape. A new nation attempting to forge its myths and identity would have difficulty accepting into its story the metaphysical flowering of an art from another nation.
Text: copyright: James Waller, 2007. Image: Jug With Flowers, 1947 copyright: Serge Martich Osterman.
3 comments:
What a thrill to discover this blog on Icilio. As someone who knew him well I can attest to his absolute dedication to his craft. It is time his work was publicly acknowledged.
If anyone reads this I would like to propose that those of us who may have any of his art works put them jointly on display, so that the public can enjoy them once more.
Hi Carlotta, if you read this please email me at starfugue@gmail.com
We've met before. I'm the author of the blogg and am preparing to engage in more formal study - at university - on Icilio. Any material, visual, verbal, documentation, would be very much appreciated! James
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