Emanuel Vidović
From the Lagoon, c. 1909
oil on canvas, 63 × 82 cm
MG-6715

Temporarily leaving Venice and Chioggia during his formative years, Emanuel Vidović (1870–1953) moved in 1892 to the entirely different environment of the industrial metropolis of Milan, dominated by the spirit of modernist progress. There, the Split-born painter supported himself through restoration work and by producing drawings for the furniture manufacturing industry. Every evening, he attended the Milanese society Famiglia Artistica, where he practiced drawing the nude and figures in costume.
Among the most significant events of Vidović’s Milan period were his participation in the exhibitions Esposizioni Riunite in 1894 and Esposizione Permanente in 1895, where he exhibited paintings depicting scenes from Venetian fishing life. At the Esposizioni Riunite exhibition, Vidović presented the painting Venezia peschereccia in what art historian Duško Kečkemet described as “a prominent gallery, beside two paintings by Segantini,” and alongside works by Ettore Tito and Angelo Dall’Oca Bianca. Vidović returned to his native Split in October 1895. This marked the beginning of his role as a central and unifying figure of Dalmatian art at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, distinguished by the quality of his painting, his exhibition activities, and his numerous organizational contributions to cultural life. Despite this, he remained deeply connected to the Italian milieu throughout his life through regular visits to the fateful Chioggia and the Venice Biennale.
Painted around 1909, From the Lagoon is another example of an abstracted landscape conceived as a “state of mind.” Vidović’s affinity for the intellectual and sophisticated—for the ineffable existing beyond visible reality—predestined him for an obsession with Venice, a city whose shimmering outlines emerge from the sea like an apparition or mirage. Vidović’s encounter with Venice was decisive and provides the key to interpreting his entire oeuvre.

Text: Ivana Rončević Elezović Phd, Museum Advisor at the National Museum of Modern Art
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb