Circe (1923)

Signed lower left: “G. B. Galizzi”
Exhibitions: First International Exhibition of Decorative Arts, Monza 1923; G. B. Galizzi Retrospective Exhibition, Bergamo 1998.
Bibliography: I Mostra Internazionale di Arti Decorative di Monza, exhibition catalogue (May – October 1923), Milan, Bestetti & Tuminelli, 1923, no. 60, p. 117; P. Angelini, Giovan Battista Galizzi, in I pittori bergamaschi dell’Ottocento, vol. IV, Bergamo, Bolis, 1992, pp. 178, 194 (ill.); Centenario della fondazione, 1895-1995. Pittura a Bergamo da Tallone a Loverini, exhibition catalogue (Bergamo, Sant’Agostino, 22 September – 20 October 1995); Ponteranica, Artigrafiche Mariani & Monti, 1995 p. 128; F. Rea, Giovan Battista Galizzi 1882-1963, exhibition catalogue (Bergamo, 9 May – 4 June 1998), Ponteranica, Artigrafiche Mariani & Monti, 1995 p. 20 (ill.)

A multifaceted figure on the Italian art scene between the 19th and 20th centuries, Giovanni Battista Galizzi was a painter, illustrator and sculptor. The eclecticism that characterises his work is reflected not only in the continuous dialogue between the arts, but also and above all in his ability to combine symbolism with a refined observation of reality, filtered through a witty and biting spirit that originates from the world of satirical illustration. Such contaminations define Galizzi’s poetics and make him an author with an unmistakable style, as perfectly demonstrated in Circe, shown here. The large oval panel was presented at the First Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Monza in 1923 and is one of the artist’s most significant pictorial works: a fascinating image full of allegorical elements in which classical culture and refined Art Deco preciousness coexist harmoniously. At the centre emerges the figure of Circe: the enigmatic and powerful sorceress of Homer’s Odyssey transformed into a seductive 1920s woman wrapped in a fashionable dress, shawls and delicate transparencies. The daughter of Helios, even in modern dress, she shines with her own light, through a Divisionism in which elongated filaments of colour are accompanied by a very modern prelude to dripping. Small but numerous and elegant sprinkles of yellow, blue, purple, pink, red and green help to portray Circe as a changing, mysterious, enchanting and at the same time deceitful goddess, a femme fatale surrounded by her companions-victims, the men she invited to her banquet and transformed into animals according to their nature. A large lion rests its muzzle on her right leg, while a goat, a dog and a donkey fill the background together with a peacock’s tail, a hare and a monkey at her feet – all of which can be traced back to studies and illustrations from previous years. This canvas can be considered emblematic of the author’s poetics: animals, a recurring motif in his work, not only in painting but also in illustration, are charged with symbolic and satirical meanings. “Galizzi was not content to take aim at man with his passions and pains, but wanted, as if to bring man closer to a simpler world more dense with truth, to introduce into the human drama […] the world of so-called low animality […].

Men and beasts participate in the world he created, through delightful forms and dense with thoughts”[1]. The monkey, a symbol of lust and sin, but also of dishonesty and cunning, is depicted as a waiter in a tailcoat and cigarette, in a humorous and caricatured representation, which recalls, especially in the figure of the monkey on the right, an etching by Galizzi in 1913[2], The Artistic Jury, presented at the Exhibition of Italian Etchers in London, where it was a huge critical and commercial success and in which a group of lively chimpanzees observe and judge a canvas. Caricatures of human expressions, which, with “that same conscious pedantry, truly imitate the thoughtful gravity of a jury intent on classifying the works”[3]. A clear reference to Gabriel von Max’s 1889 painting Monkeys as Art Critics. However, the Bergamo artist reworks this reference in a completely personal way, where humour is intertwined with symbolism – it is no coincidence that the artist has always measured himself against the great disturbing themes of literature and mythology, starting with the hypnotic Medusa, purchased by Ricci Oddi in 1917 to another Homeric subject from the 1910s, the etching Scylla. But in the canvas presented here, satirical illustration merges with mythological narration and wit with a magical atmosphere, imbued with subtle ambiguity, in which a contemporary Circe comes to life: a towering figure in vivid colours, surrounded by animals which, just as in von Max’s canvas, take on not only a decorative role but also a critical and allusive one. The scene is thus charged with refined irony, where “humour derives from the juxtaposition of elements of modernity with those figurations of eternal harmony and grandiose poetry”[4].

[1] A. Vajana, Giovanni Battista Galizzi, “La rivista di Bergamo mensile illustrata”, 1, 1926, pp. 23–26.

[2] R. Calzini, Un illustratore: G. B. Galizzi, “Emporium”, LVIII, 348, 1923, p. 374.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., p. 364.

Elena Lago