Red Turban

Signed on the lower left: “Camillo Innocenti”

Signed lower left: “Camillo Innocenti”.

Exhibitions: International Exhibition of Fine Arts, 1911.

Essential Bibliography: Catalog of the Fine Arts Exhibition – 1911 International Exhibition in Rome, Rome 1911, p. 25; C. Giron, Exposition internationale des Beaux-Arts à Rome. L’Italie, Journal de Genève, September 6, 1911; L. Ozzola, Contemporary Art at the 1911 Rome Exhibition, Rome 1911, pp. 24–25; V. Pica, World Art in Rome in 1911, Bergamo 1912, pp. CLI–CLII; L. Djokic Titonel, M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Camillo Innocenti 1871–1961, Rome 1993, p. 63; E. Querci, Rome 1911: The Triumph of Zuloaga, Anglada, and the Spanish Painters, in “Storia dell’arte,” 2010, no. 125/126, pp. 217–220.

“In Rome, where life was blissful and peaceful, the Lionnes, Innocentis, Coromaldis, Carlandis, and Arturo Noci triumphed,” recalled the Futurist Gino Severini regarding his early days in the capital 1. Among the artists he mentioned, the most influential was undoubtedly the Roman Camillo Innocenti, who played a pivotal role in the capital’s art scene during the first two decades of the 20th century. After a period of training under the guidance of some of the greatest Italian masters of the nineteenth century—namely Domenico Morelli, Antonio Mancini, and Francesco Paolo Michetti—Innocenti initially devoted himself to painting with folkloric themes, in line with the literary trends of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s time, approached with a modern painterly style in step with developments in European painting. With the gold medals he won in St. Louis in 1904 for Canzone ciociara and in 1905—awarded by the Irish painter John Lavery—at the Venice Biennale for the Abruzzo-themed painting Sui monti, Innocenti received his first major international accolades: it was thus that the artist turned toward more modern subjects, mostly society portraits and scenes of domestic life in which women are the absolute protagonists; this success soon led him to be described as “the painter of feminine grace and worldly elegance”2. At first, the artist seemed to look to English portraiture, from which he borrowed a preference for color harmonies reminiscent of Whistler: the critic Ugo Ojetti spoke of “harmonies of white and gray, ivory, and blue”3 for the canvases exhibited at the seventh Venice Biennale4, while Innocenti himself defined

a group of works created between 1907 and 1908—such as La visita (Rome, National Gallery of Modern Art)—as a “series of color harmonies”5. Subsequently, in his fervent search for a more uninhibited form of modernity through experimentation with color, Innocenti arrived at a personal interpretation of the Divisionist technique, often employed to achieve effects of artificial light in line with the contemporary experiments of the Futurists. This is the case with Red Turban, a work presented in a solo exhibition at the prestigious International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Rome in 1911—of which he himself was a member of the organizing committee—along with eight other paintings: Portrait of a Lady, At the “Champs Élysées”, The Quadrille, At the Café-Concert (in which the same model from Red Turban appears from behind, wearing the same hat, alongside another figure), At Night in the “Bois de Boulogne”, Summer Evening (Rome, National Gallery of Modern Art), Late (Rome, National Gallery of Modern Art), and Nude. Almost all the works presented on that occasion had been created during his 1910 stay in Paris, where the artist had traveled to invite French artists to participate in the major exhibition in Rome. In Red Turban, as in Summer Evening, the electric light of the “café-concert” bathes the face of the elegantly dressed woman. The artist himself attests, in his autobiography, that his interest in lighting and nocturnal settings stemmed from his association with the Catalan painter Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa, who was active in Paris from 1894 to 1914:

“He took me to the most bizarre nightspots. He would always offer me exquisite Havana cigars, his pockets full of them. It was during that period that I painted the picture of women in the evening at the Bois de Boulogne. I bought the costumes for those figures from Fortuny, the son of the painter Mariano, who made printed fabrics with strange designs and beautiful colors. […] Anglada painted by the light of certain lamps that gave off a cool, bluish glow. His palette was a large side table onto which he squeezed no fewer than three or four tubes of the same color. He used extremely expensive paints made in Belgium, and he made heavy use of a certain “Aureolin,” the price of which was dizzying even back then. He was one of the first to capture the damp, strange hues of those outdoor cafés at night, with the figures and trees illuminated by artificial lights»⁶.

When Innocenti exhibited his Parisian canvases in Valle Giulia, critics immediately noted the reference to Anglada’s nocturnal painting: Leandro Ozzola, for example, spoke of “Angladian inspiration”7. The Spanish “school” was among the most highly regarded at the Exhibition8, and Innocenti, with his internationally oriented painting, stood in continuity with it.

The success he achieved on that occasion beyond Italy’s borders, as well as the contacts he established with influential figures in the international art world, brought him back to Paris in 1913: the painter traveled to the French capital not only to invite artists to the first major exhibition of the Roman “Secession” (of which, once again, he was a member of the board of directors), but also to organize his solo exhibition at the prestigious Bernheim Jeune gallery—an event that established him as one of the most accomplished Italian artists of international renown, on par with the Impressionists exhibiting in the same gallery (Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, etc.). There he exhibited thirty-nine paintings, ranging from subjects from Abruzzo to his more recent Parisian works. Among the works presented there that remain unidentified to this day—due to the French translations of the titles, whose meanings, in many cases, do not correspond to the Italian originals9—it cannot be ruled out that Red Turban was also included, given the evident stylistic affinity with some of the Divisionist paintings published in the exhibition catalog10.

Manuel Carrera

1 G. Severini, La vita di un pittore, Milan 1983, p. 18.

2 V. Pica, Artisti contemporanei: Camillo Innocenti, in “Emporium,” 1909, vol. XXIX, no. 174, p. 420.

3 U. Ojetti, “Solo Exhibition by Camillo Innocenti,” in VIII International Art Exhibition of the City of Venice, 1909, Venice 1909, p. 81.

4 VII International Art Exhibition of the City of Venice, exhibition catalog, Venice 1907, p. 85, nos. 15–18:

On the small panel, *Sick Little Girl*, *White and Blue*, *The Golden Angel*.

5 A. Labbati, “The Painter of Feminine Grace: Camillo Innocenti,” in *Il Secolo XX*, 1908, vol. VII, no. 10, p. 806.

6 C. Innocenti, Memories of Art and Life, Rome 1959, p. 84.

7 L. Ozzola, Contemporary Art at the 1911 Rome Exposition, Rome 1911, pp. 24–25.