(Rovigo 1887 - Peyloubère 1969)
Giulietta with large hat (1912)
Measures: cm 60 x 25
Technique: oil on cardboard
Bibliography: V. Vareilles, Cavaglieri. Catalogo ragionato dei dipinti, volume II, Turin 2006, p. 82, No. 364
1912 was the year in which Mario Cavaglieri met his future wife and muse Giulietta Catellini, who would appear again and again in his paintings. Among the earliest examples of this intimate production dedicated to her is Giulietta con ampio cappello (Juliet with a large hat) from 1912. Few but decisive brushstrokes make up the fauve background that welcomes the elegant full-length profile of Juliet wrapped in a red and black dress and adorned with a refined wide-brimmed hat, which gives a sense of secret mystery to her face. A small but precious oil on cardboard in which the sinuous silhouette of the woman, swift and expressive, is immersed in the greenery of a garden. A vigorous workmanship in which softer and darker tones dialogue, in a subject, that of Juliet with a hat, which in several variants will return in his production of the 1910s.
A characteristic cycle of female images that anticipates and heralds the beginning of the so-called ‘brilliant years’, between 1913 and 1922, a decade in which Mario Cavaglieri definitively arrives at a joyful and sumptuous painting style, with which he will earn the favour of critics such as Roberto Longhi and Antonio Pica, who presented his personal exhibition at the Pesaro Gallery in 1920, speaking of ‘decorative sentiment and a playful passion for colour, which procures a real and lively delight for the eyes’[1]. His move to the estate in Gascony, Peyloubère, in 1925, allowed him to frequent the Parisian cultural milieu and participate in the Salons with constant success.
He would only return to Italy during the years of the Second World War, only to return to France in 1946. His critical fortune would increase in the 1950s, until Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti decided to dedicate a solo exhibition to him at the Strozzina in Florence in 1953. The critic then curated the exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi ‘Modern Art in Italy 1915-1935’ in 1967, which included fifteen works by Mario Cavaglieri, celebrating him for the last time before his death in 1969.
[1] V. Pica, Individual exhibition of H. St. LERCHE – A. MARTINI – M. CAVALIERI, Milan, Galleria Pesaro, 1920.
Elena Lago
