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GIULIO ARISTIDE SARTORIO
scheduled

GIULIO ARISTIDE SARTORIO:

The poem of human life

From 16 May to 28 September 2025

Ca' Pesaro - International Gallery of Modern Art

Ca' Pesaro - International Gallery of Modern Art

Santa Croce, 2076, Venice

Closed now: open at 10:00

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Giulio Aristide Sartorio, a regular at the Caffè Greco in Rome, an unavoidable reference for the emerging Italian Symbolism and a member of the association In Arte Libertas, was already present at the first edition of the Venice Biennale, of which he would become a frequent participant and collaborator. At the suggestion of Antonio Fradeletto, the general secretary of the Biennale, in the spring of 1906 Sartorio accepted to create a large decorative cycle to be placed in the central hall of the 1907 International Exhibition. He was officially entrusted with the task of illustrating, based on ancient mythology, the Poem of Human Life. In the four main scenes - The Light, The Darkness, The Love, The Death - alternated with ten vertical canvases (depicting Grace and Art supported by virile energy), the artist proposed a dramatic vision of existence, from birth to death. Between the two extremes are the allegories of Darkness and the divergence between the figures of Eros and Himeros, good and bad love. The complex iconography put forward by Sartorio, also approved by Gabriele d'Annunzio, appears as a synthesis between the Mediterranean world and Nordic culture. Devoid of architectural elements and resolved in monochrome, the pictorial cycle stands out for the exceptional deployment of moving figures that in the canvases of Darkness and Death take on a rotating form, confirming the symbolic intent of the whole. To complete the approximately 230 square meters of the work in just nine months, Sartorio adopted a rather rapid painting technique: "I used a mixture of wax, turpentine, and poppy oil." Composition confirmed by the analyses of the Laboratory of Sciences for the Conservation of DAIS, Ca' Foscari University of Venice. The fourteen scenes, installed for the opening of the 1907 exhibition, remained in place even for the following edition and then made their way to Ca' Pesaro thanks to the gift that Vittorio Emanuele III made, in 1909, to the International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice.
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Santa Croce, 2076, Venice, Italy

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opens - closes last entry
monday Closed now
tuesday 10:00 - 18:00
wednesday 10:00 - 18:00
thursday 10:00 - 18:00
friday 10:00 - 18:00
saturday 10:00 - 18:00
sunday 10:00 - 18:00

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