Marino Tartaglia (1894-1984)
A Self-Portrait/A Self-Portrait with a Pipe, 1920/1921
oil on canvas
44.6×32.5 cm
MG-3880
Marino Tartaglia’s A Self-Portrait from 1920 summarises the expressionist stage of his oeuvre, which was significantly influenced by the work of painter Miroslav Kraljević and the Munich Circle. The palette of his earlier stage had featured bright, vibrant colours, which here became dimmer and darker suggestive of a more intimate context. The introspective quality of Tartaglia’s A Self-Portrait is also underscored by his eyes gazing into the distance and away from the observer, which highlights the figure’s exclusive commitment to his own fixation.
The oeuvre of Marino Tartaglia (1894-1984) was shaped over the decades as a unique synthesis of different influences and styles, ranging from El Greco and Tintoretto, Primitivism, Cezannism, Cubism, Futurism to Neoclassicism, Colourism, and Lyrical and Reductive Abstraction. Once he finished primary school, he moved to Italy, where in 1912 he began his studies in Florence (under Alberto Giacometti) and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. During his studies he came into contact with representatives of Futurism. He was the only foreigner to have exhibited his work in Rome in 1918 at the Exhibition of Independent Artists together with Italian Avant-Gardists (Carlo Carrà, Giorgio De Chirico, Enrico Prampolini). After the end of World War I, he lived in Split, Vienna, Belgrade and France. In 1931 he became a full professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and in 1947 a full member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Text: Zlatko Tot, curator intern © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Ana Janković
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb