Arturo Martini (Treviso 1889 - Milano 1947)

Alongside the assimilation of the modes of European Secessionist symbolism, evident in his early graphic production and small-scale plastic work, the work he did as a boy in ceramics factories proved important for Arturo Martini, an experience that left him with a love of craftsmanship for the material, in particular for terracotta, which he had studied in Canova's sketches in nearby Possagno. His trip to Paris, where he came into contact with Modigliani and Boccioni, and above all his participation in the initiatives of the Cà Pesaro group, organised by Barbantini, was decisive. In the early 1910s, the artist attempted a synthesis of symbolic linearity, expressive content and autonomy of plastic form. In the climate of the post-war 'call to order', Martini adhered to the metaphysical synthesis of forms and the primitivist and classicist myth advocated by the art criticism magazine Valori Plastici. A leading figure in the twentieth century group, Martini managed to hold monumental commitment with consistency of style, even in the acceptance of the classicist order present in works marked by the rhetoric of Fascism: La Giustizia Fascista (Fascist Justice), 1936-37. Around 1940, the artist reached the threshold of abstraction, maturing a reflection and an awareness of the crisis that led him, in 1945, to draw his conclusions in the essay La scultura lingua morta (Sculpture as a Dead Language).

In 2000, Galleria Guastalla held an exhibition with works by Arturo Martini and Mario Sironi, bringing together the monumentality and archaism of the works of these two great 20th century artists.