Pietro Annigoni: Francesco Bartoli

Drawing by Pietro Annigoni

"In 1923 my father sent me to Milan's famous Calchi-Taeggi College, where I lived a sort of double life. On the one hand, a dreamy student, mad about art; on the other, a juvenile gangster resenting authority and conformity. The good side began when I was befriended by Professor Francesco Bartoli, who subsequently taught me Classics - and oh, so much more - for a whole year. On his desk during the examination was a large art book with an illustrated cover that attracted and held my attention. After the test was over he asked me why I was so interested in the book and I told him it was because I intended to be a painter. He said that he, too, loved painting, and from then on he did all he could to encourage me in my ambition. He believed that none of the arts should be exclusive and taught me to love and appreciate architecture, poetry, music, and great literature.

Bartoli was a leading light of a Milanese society called The Friends of Art, whose members were artisans, craftsmen, or just working men interested in the arts. On Sundays he conducted groups of these men around one of the city's many museums, art galleries, or treasure-filled churches. And he took me along with them. His son, who was about my age, came too. Then, one Sunday that I remember so well, we went to the Brera Museum to see the wonderful collection or paintings there. But I must confess that it was not the paintings that made that particular visit so memorable. The Professor's daughter, accompanied us and I was dazed by her beauty. She seemed to me to have stepped straight out of Leonardo's painting of Beatrice d'Este, a portrait that I had long been in love with.

It would be impossible for me to list all the enduring pleasures of this life that Francesco Bartoli opened up to me. They were not only cultural pleasures. He instilled in me a love of nature, of the open air and, particularly, of mountains. He was himself a mountaineer and spent all his summer holidays in the Dolomites where, tragically, his son died scaling a needle, which was later named after him. My own climbing experiences were not over-ambitious, but sketching expeditions in the smaller mountain ranges of North Italy, alone or with friends and sometimes lasting several weeks, brought me many unforgettable adventures."

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

 

Pietro Annigoni: Struggles

"Juanita" by Pietro Annigoni

"At ten began the most miserable period of my life. I was sent to a new school and from the start was unpopular with the other boys and with the masters. This hell lasted nearly three years, during which my whole personality changed. From being a daring and adventurous boy, I became timid and developed an inferiority complex that - and this may surprise all but my close friends - has stayed with me all my life. 

Hating school as I did, I drew even closer to my father, unconsciously looking for protection. He was still giving me drawing lessons and that, in turn, gave him a renewed enthusiasm for drawing himself. He made portraits of my brother Giovanni, and me, that seemed to me so good that I strove still harder to equal his skill as a draughtsman. Sometimes he would read to us from his favourite books and talk to us about them as though we were his equals. In that way, inevitably, we absorbed most of his ideas, including his hatred of the Church.

Ironically, my nickname at that time was 'Canonicus,' a holy-sounding name inspired first because I was a heavily-built and serious child, and second because I lived in the Via Canonica. Then, and for many years afterwards, I signed my drawings 'Canonicus.' Later, it gave way to the cipher which I still use today, a 'C' followed by three crosses representing the Via Crucis - the hard Road to the Cross which the artist has to travel.

I believe that (in spite of being the son of rabid anti-clericals) the longing for a certain and revealed faith in the Divine has deep roots in my spirit and determines one of its essential, if contradictory, traits, which does not fail to be reflected in my actions as man and artist. On the other hand, the spiritual anarchy of our time often arouses in me a furious sense of rebellion that tends to reinforce this longing, which is above all, the, the nostalgia of one who is not in accord with the epoch and the society to which he belongs." 

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

 

Pietro Annigoni: A Prediction

"St. Joseph the Worker"(detail) by Pietro Annigoni

"When I made my first visit to England in 1949, I was embarrassed, even frightened, by my ignorance of the English language. Five years later, when I painted the Queen at Buckingham Palace, my English was still so poor that we talked to each other in French. And yet, the very first word I learned as a child was an English one, 'cow'. The house in which I was born, on the outskirts of Milan, overlooked fields where cattle grazed, and my mother held me in her arms at the window, pointed to the cattle and repeated the word over and over again until I, too, could say it.

My mother's parents were Italians but she had been born and brought up in California, and English - or American - was her language. My father, Ricciardo Annigoni, was a mathematician and engineer working in America when he met my mother, Teresa Botti, and married her in New York. Then returning to Italy, they made their home first in Lucca, then Milan where I was born. Not long after my younger brother was born my father told me that when I grew up, I would be an artist. I had myself decided that even earlier but without knowing, as my father did, how hard I would have to work to become a good artist. He had some talent for drawing, and as a young man, may well have thought of becoming an artist himself. 

There were several of his drawings hanging in our home, one of them a self-portrait which was really good and which I tried to imitate at a very early age. But I was six when I made a curious drawing that/ presumably because it had some element of originality, prompted my father to say, 'You'll become a great painter one day.' From then on he did all he could to make his prediction come true. Even before I went to school he gave me lessons in drawing, painting - and his beloved mathematics."

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)  

Ivan Olinsky: A Quiet and Successful Career

"Madonna" by Ivan Olinsky

"During the 1920s, Olinsky experimented with new approaches such as showing figures against translucent curtains or in front of mirrors. His style became progressively simpler, however, and by the late 1920s, his works were characterized by spare compositions in which abstract values are accentuated. In the 1930s, he continued to create minimalist designs. The portraits he executed during the decade show women who exude the energetic spirit associated with modern city life. Olinsky also explored symbolic portrayals, depicting a few images entitled “Madonna,” one of which featured his daughter Leonore. During the 1940s and 1950s, Olinsky continued to portray women, at times showing subjects engaged in reverie and at other times depicting confident subjects dressed in the casual attire typical of their time.

An impeccable craftsman, Olinsky created works that not only captured the realities of his subjects, but also expressed his enthusiasm for them. Although his art received considerable attention from the press during his lifetime, there were no articles or critical reviews devoted to him. His achievement was recognized by a memorial exhibition at the Art Students League in 1962 (where he had taught for years), but it was not until 1995, that it was given scholarly attention, when an exhibition accompanied by a catalogue was held at The William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Olinsky’s work may be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Art Students League, New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia; the Dayton Art Institute, Ohio; the Everhart Museum, Scranton, Pennsylvania; the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut; the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, Hartford, Connecticut; the Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, Connecticut; the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Academy of Design, New York; the National Arts Club, New York; and the New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut."

Olinsky suffered a stroke in December 1961 and died at the home of his daughter, Leonore, on February 11, 1962.

To be continued

(Excerpts from the biography of Ivan Olinsky from Spanierman Gallery's website.) 

Ivan Olinsky: Work & Family

"The Poetry Reading" by Ivan Olinsky

"While Ivan and Genevieve Olinsky were living in Venice from 1906 until 1909, he created small scale spontaneously rendered street scenes. In 1907, their daughter Leonore was born. Their second daughter, Tosca, arrived two years later, around the time that the artist and his family moved to Paris. In the French capital, Olinsky established a studio and studied masterpieces at the Louvre and the Luxembourg museum. He also spent time in the Normandy town of Vernon, where he began to concentrate on the figure.

Olinsky returned to New York with his family in 1910 and set up a studio at Washington Square, where portraiture became his emphasis. At first, he painted his wife and daughters, but soon, he was flooded with commissions. By 1912, he was supplementing his income from portraits by teaching at the Academy, where, two years later, he was elected an associate member and awarded the Thomas B. Clarke Prize in its annual exhibition. He gained full membership in the Academy in 1919. He also taught at the Art Students League.

In addition to painting portraits for his living, Olinsky created paintings of figurative subjects for exhibition. Often depicting attractive women, he demonstrated his skills at modeling with color and treating three-dimensional form in a convincing fashion. Critics remarked on his skills, admiring 'the dash and verve that all his things have,' and commenting that 'his color modelling and surety of line have made him known everywhere.'”  

To be continued

(Excerpts from the biography of Ivan Olinsky from Spanierman Gallery's website.) 

 

Ivan Olinsky: Studies & Apprenticeships

"The Adjustments of Conflicting Interest" by John LaFarge
in the Supreme Court Room, Minnesota State Capitol, Saint Paul

"Moral and Divine Law" by John LaFarge
in the Supreme Court Room, Minnesota State Capitol, Saint Paul

"The Relation of the Individual to the State" by John LaFarge
in the Supreme Court Room, Minnesota State Capitol, Saint Paul

"The Recording of Precedents" by John LaFarge
in the Supreme Court Room, Minnesota State Capitol, Saint Paul

"On the basis of a drawing of an antique sculpture that Ivan Olinsky submitted, he was able to enroll in the National Academy of Design in 1894, when he was sixteen. At the Academy, he initially enrolled in the antique class, but quickly advanced to the life class. His teachers included Francis Coates Jones, Edgar Melville Ward, Charles Yardley Turner, and George Willoughby Maynard.

At the conclusion of his studies at the Academy, Olinsky assisted Maynard, an important mural painter, with decorative commissions. Through Maynard, Olinsky met Elmer E. Garnsey, who had a firm on Park Avenue that specialized in decorative work for public buildings. Garnsey, in turn, introduced Olinsky to John La Farge, who hired him as a studio assistant. Olinsky worked with La Farge on mural commissions for the Supreme Court Room of the Minnesota Capital and for the Baltimore Courthouse. He also assisted La Farge with designs for stained glass windows.

Although Olinsky craved a career of his own, he continued to work for La Farge until 1906, when he left for Europe with his wife, Genevieve Karfunkle, the sister of a fellow student from the Academy, who he had married in 1904. While living in Venice from 1906 until 1909, he created small scale spontaneously rendered street scenes."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the biography of Ivan Olinsky from Spanierman Gallery's website.)