The Pergola (1920)

Arturo Noci (Rome 1874 – New York 1953)

The Pergola, 1920

Oil on canvas, 80 x 63.5 cm

Signed and dated lower left ‘Arturo Noci / Pellestrina 1920’.

Exhibition: I Biennale Romana. Esposizione Nazionale di Belle Arti nel cinquantenario della Capitale, Rome 1921.

Bibliography: I Biennale Romana. Esposizione Nazionale di Belle Arti nel cinquantenario della Capitale, Rome 1921, p. 170, no. 11.

The Pergola is part of a series of paintings made by the Roman painter Arturo Noci on the island of Pellestrina, where he stayed in the late summer and early autumn of 1920, as attested by a letter of greetings sent on 5 October to the painter Cipriano Efisio Oppo on the occasion of his wedding^[1]. The work is part of the artist’s mature phase and is revealing, as we shall see, a clear change of direction in his research. From the very beginning, Noci had distinguished himself for his elegant and refined painting, particularly appreciated by high society, which praised his ability to combine Italian tradition with the artistic trends of his time and in particular those of the English school. Appreciated as much for his landscapes as for his nudes, Noci achieved fame even outside Italy, especially as a portrait painter. Famous were the words of the critic Ugo Ojetti who, in 1906, in a review of the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Milan, described him as ‘the greatest, if not the only, Roman portraitist’[2]. Always eager to update his language, in the first five years of the 20th century Noci experimented with Divisionist technique – which had found new life in Rome thanks to the contribution of Giacomo Balla and Enrico Lionne – regularly presenting the results of his research at the Venice Biennials. At the beginning of the 1910s, he thus established himself as one of the most influential Roman pointillists, also thanks to the works he presented at the exhibitions of the ‘Secession’, a group that saw him as one of the founders and that was active with annual exhibitions from 1912 to 1917. His ‘aristocratic pointillism’, as Enrico Prampolini sarcastically called it[3], was particularly appreciated by critics for its rendering, through a tessellated touch, of elegant harmonies of tones reminiscent of Whistler.

Between 1915 and 1920, his painting became progressively freer and more mature, paying more and more attention to drawing rigour, light and solidity of volume, gradually moving away from the divisionism and Art Nouveau atmospheres that had characterised it until then. This change became evident in the eyes of critics when the artist resumed exhibiting after the break imposed by the First World War. Regarding some of the paintings exhibited in Rome in 1920, Arturo Lancellotti observed how ‘this artist, who had already made his name and his clientele for many years, gives us a noble example of disinterested love for art, not hesitating to abandon the usual technique, which had brought him honours and money, in order to express himself with newer and more tasteful procedures’^[4]. The following year, reviewing the Naples Biennale, Guido Guida then spoke of a ‘new youthfulness, rich in colouristic achievements and happy expression’^[5]. Deeply inspired, the painter produced during this phase a rich series of interior scenes, landscapes and portraits of housewives and farm workers, caught in everyday gestures, with a monumentality previously reserved only for high society. To this production belongs La pergola[6], exhibited in 1921 at the first Rome Biennale, together with five other paintings, four of which were also executed at Pellestrina. With a free, luminous painting style, Noci depicts a man at work, advancing towards the viewer with a basket full of vegetables (perhaps tomatoes), the only note of warm, bright colour in a calibrated harmony of cold, brown and green tones. ‘His progress is enormous and makes him almost unrecognisable’, wrote an anonymous reviewer about Noci’s works exhibited at the Roman biennial; “The five canvases he presents are not subservient to any canon, full of light and colour, they are the expression of a sincere search for truth, for the real pictorial dream”[7]. The painter himself was fully aware of the artistic value of his Pellestrinotta production, so much so that he presented it at subsequent exhibitions, such as the Promotrice in Turin in 1922, where he won the gold medal with his oil painting Tombolo, a portrait of an elderly woman intent on embroidering in an interior.

At the present state of knowledge, it appears that La pergola was part of the body of works that Noci took with him to New York in 1923, probably with the intention of including it in the solo exhibition he planned to organise but which, for unknown reasons, did not materialise. Sold by the painter himself to a private collector, together with two other paintings (Canale di Burano, 1909, and Rinascita, 1917), the canvas remained in the United States until 2024.

[1] F. Benzi, Materiali inediti dall’Archivio di Cipriano Efisio Oppo, in ‘Bollettino d’arte’, 1986, no. 37-38, p. 181.

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

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

[4] A. Lancellotti, La 89° mostra d’arte della ‘Società Amatori e Cultori’, in ‘Emporium’, 1920, vol. LI, no. 305, p. 253.

[5] G. Guida, La prima Biennale d’Arte a Napoli, in ‘Emporium’, 1921, vol. LIV, no. 322, p. 197.

[6] The theme of the pergola, in its play of light and shadow, had already been tackled by the artist in the painting of the same name made in 1919 and exhibited in 1920 at the Venice Biennale.

[7] S. Drasila, Cronaca d’arte. La Biennale Romana. II, in ‘La Siepe’, 1921, no. 3, p. 163. The author’s name, Silvo Drasila, appears to be a pseudonym in the current state of research.

Manuel Carrera