Marino Tartaglia
Figure, 1975
oil on canvas
90 × 52 cm
MG-3468

Marino Tartaglia (1894–1984) was a universal modernist of both the historical and the high modern period. His painting represents a synthesis of influences and styles: El Greco and Tintoretto, primitivism, Cézannism, Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Neoclassicism, Colorism, lyrical and reductive abstraction. Not individually, but integrated as a whole. Tartaglia’s references are often elusive, while his art is grounded in the rationalization of painterly procedures. Through them he reconciles the principles of plastic order with an emotional approach to painting (T. Maroević). He reduces the painting to flat volume, eventually arriving at a typified form—the pentagram. Tartaglia’s sfumato is in correlation with E. Vidović. In his Marginalia he resolves contradictions with the postulate: “A painting must reconcile all opposites; it must be, in its own time, an atemporal archaeological find.”

From 1912 he studied in Florence (with Giacometti) and in Rome at the Istituto Superiore di Belle Arti, where he befriended Futurists associated with the journal Lacerba. As the only foreigner, he exhibited in Rome in 1918 at the Exhibition of Independent Artists alongside eminent representatives of the Italian avant-garde (C. Carà, G. De Chirico, E. Prampolini, A. Soffici). After the First World War (1918–1921) he lived in Split, Vienna, Belgrade, and France. From 1947 he was a full professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and from 1948 a regular member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.

The painting Figure (1975) distills its subject into two fundamental registers—presenting a reduced and essential depiction of a blue figure, an object in and of itself.

He received the Vladimir Nazor Lifetime Achievement Award in 1964, and retrospectives of his work were held in 1975 at the Art Pavilion in Zagreb and in 2004 at Klovićevi Dvori Gallery.

Text: Željko Marciuš, Senior Curator, National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb

Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb