Rebirth (1917)

Signed and dated lower left: “Arturo Noci / 1917”

Exhibitions: Esposizione di Belle Arti della Società Amatori e Cultori, Rome 1918.

Bibliography: Esposizione di Belle Arti della Società Amatori e Cultori, Rome 1918, p. 6, n. 9; A. M. [Antonio Maraini], L’87^a Esposizione romana degli Amatori e Cultori di Belle Arti, in “La Tribuna”, 26 March 1918, no. 85, p. 3; F. Sapori, L’87^a mostra degli Amatori e Cultori d’Arte in Roma, in “L’Illustrazione Italiana”, 28 April 1918, no. 17, p. 339; Alla mostra di Amatori e Cultori, in “Il piccolo”, 14-15 April 1918, no. 103; M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, P. Spadini, L. Djokic (curated by), Arturo Noci: un pittore tra Roma e New York 1874-1953, Rome 1996, p. 110, no. 201.

Rebirth is to be considered one of the most significant outcomes of Arturo Noci’s artistic research. Mainly due to its subject matter, unusual for the Roman painter, the painting constitutes a unicum compared to the rest of his production. In order to fully understand the value of the work in the context of Noci’s career, it is worth retracing the salient moments of his career from his beginnings to 1917, the year in which the painting was realised.

Born into a family of artists in Rome, Arturo Noci took up painting as a teenager, only to make his debut at exhibitions in the Capital at the age of twenty-three in 1897. He soon established himself as one of the most appreciated Italian figure painters, thanks above all to his continuous participation – and constant critical acclaim – in the Venice Biennale from 1901 to 1922. Profoundly influenced by contemporary portraiture, in particular by the English school of Whistler, Sargent and Lavery, he soon developed a language à la mode that gained him the favour of high society, attracted by the comforting atmospheres and graceful tones of his figuration. Among the numerous international commissions he received, we should mention the portrait of Rama V, King of Siam, painted in Baden-Baden in 1907. Only a year earlier, in a review of the Esposizione Nazionale di Belle Arti in Milan, critic Ugo Ojetti had described him as “the greatest, if not the only, Roman portraitist”[1].

Noci began experimenting with the Divisionist technique within the first five years of the 20th century, and then adopted it more convincingly from 1910 onwards, declining it through a tessellated touch, all aimed at rendering refined chromatic harmonies of warm tones. 1911 marked a crucial moment in his career: at the end of the great International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Valle Giulia, where he presented the painting In the Cabin  (Rome, National Gallery of Modern Art), he was one of the founders of the Roman Secession, an association of artists officially established in January 1912 and active with annual exhibitions until 1917. The aim of the Secessionists was to attempt a renewal of the Roman exhibition scene, monopolised by the Società degli Amatori e Cultori di Belle Arti, without, however, promoting the more radical avant-gardes. During the intense and prolific years of the Secession, Noci developed a personal interpretation of pointillism: what, with an expression that was as critical as it was fitting, was defined by Enrico Prampolini as “aristocratic pointillism”[2] . In the meantime, the artist continued to meet the demands of high society and even the world of show business, producing portraits of famous film divas such as Lyda Borelli (1914) and Soava Gallone (1916). Around 1915 he began to engage in new technical solutions: the divided touch was alternated with freer and faster brushstrokes, emphasising, as never before for him, the value of the pictorial gesture. The comparison with German and Central European art also led him to a greater attention to drawing, which became more incisive, and to light, understood as a means of giving solidity to volumes, thus marking a gradual break with Art Nouveau decorativism.

Rebirth fits fully into this phase of renewal: the divided touch is rigorously employed in the landscape area alone, while the rest of the painted surface is spread with long, broad and dense brushstrokes. The work was presented at the 1918 exhibition of the Amatori e Cultori, an exhibition that constituted the first opportunity for reconciliation between the secessionists and the old institution, by then profoundly transformed by internal divisions and, of course, the world conflict. Exhibited alongside the charcoal portrait of the collector Ernesto Tucci and the paintings Lizard and The Green Shawl, the painting marked an abandonment of warm tones in favour of chromatic harmonies based on cold tones. Critic Francesco Sapori was the first to document this turning point, noting how Noci, who was used to “ring three or four motifs by putting veils and screens between himself and nature to no end”, with Rebirth  “opens the window wide” to face the “sun-imbued blue”[3]. Antonio Maraini, having noted the suggestive effect of light and colour of the other paintings on display, praised their “breathing perspective”, through which the artist had managed to concretise “effectively states of mind”[4]

The title Rebirth, a message of hope in an Italy irreparably scarred by the devastation of the First World War, must also have been evocative. The man from the back – probably a wounded officer, as the detail of the stick resting next to his legs also seems to suggest – looks out over a bright landscape stretching to the horizon beyond the balcony. This iconography makes it a true allegory of rebirth from war, in which light, in a broader sense, represents life re-emerging from the darkness of death.

In the current state of knowledge, it is difficult to reconstruct the changes of ownership of the painting. It appears, however, that Rebirth was part of the corpus of works that Noci took with him to New York in 1923, probably with the intention of including it in the solo exhibition he wanted to organise but which, for unknown reasons, could not take place. Sold by the painter himself in New York to a private collector, together with two other paintings (Canale di Burano, 1909, and La pergola, 1920), the canvas remained in the United States until 2024.

Manuel Carrera

[1] U. Ojetti, Attraverso l’Esposizione: pittori e pitture, in “Corriere della Sera”, 23 May 1906, p. 3.

[2] E. Prampolini, Secessione, Prima Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte. Rome 1913, in “L’artista moderno”, 1913, 12, pp. 149-155.

[3] F. Sapori, L’87^a mostra degli Amatori e Cultori d’Arte in Roma, in “L’Illustrazione Italiana”, 28 April 1918, no. 17, p. 339.

[4] A. M. [Antonio Maraini], L’87^a Esposizione romana degli Amatori e Cultori di Belle Arti, in “La Tribuna”, 26 March 1918, no. 85, p. 3.