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Exhibitions / Max Fabiani |
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| Max Fabiani* |
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by Marco Pozzetto
* From the catalogue of the exhibition Postcards by Max Fabiani, Gorizia 1986
In any exhibition dedicated to architects, painters, sculptors or designers active at the beginning of the 20th century it is almost a duty to display some examples of the "post-cards" which the artists used to commit messages or paintings to. Sometimes such means of communication reached a genuinely artistic level. We could mention the Messages to Prince Yusul by Franc Marc that belong to the highest expression of pre-war European painting, even if the current "grave" critics will disagree with this statement.
The attempt to express themselves by the particular means of visual arts, instead of through words, was quite widespread among artists at that time, probably for two reasons; on the one hand, visual art allowed them a more immediate synthesis than words - often they reached the same level as poetry did - on the other, the ideas they used to put across couldn't be expressed without long and, for the artists themselves, tedious descriptions.
Max Fabiani (1865-1962), widely-known town planner-architect, university professor, essayist and advisor to the powerful in Vienna, was open-minded towards every artistic and technological innovation - just think of his discussions with the leading figures of the secession and his courage in presenting in 1904 the House Conveyable on Wheels. Obviously he was well acquainted with his colleagues' custom of committing their ideas to postcards. Yet it is not entirely clear whether he had made use of them since the beginning of the century. It is certain that after 1914, when his professional duties dwindled, he enjoyed taking up painting watercolour postcards. After a while he turned this means of communication into a private way of keeping a record of the most important events of his time or simply of his personal feelings, as a kind of diary.
Despite the fact that by the end of the 1930s he had destroyed most of his private archive and the rest likewise during fighting in 1944, the architect still managed to jealously conserve a part of his considerable number of cards - no longer "postal" except for the dimensions - clearly because they were full of meaning that today we can only partially decipher.
Before the collection became scattered, I was able to count hundreds of them.
The opportunity to display them came about through the donation to the Musei Provinciali in Gorizia of Max Fabiani's correspondence with the painter-ceramicist Neera Gatti. Coming, on her mother's side, from the famous Premuda family of Lussino, who were sailors and shipowners, since she was very young, Neera Gatti met some of the most important Trieste painters such as Pietro Lucano and Guido Grimani from whom she learnt the rudiments of painting. With hindsight and on the evidence of the didactic cards Fabiani used to send her by post at the beginning of the '30s, I think we can consider Neera Gatti to be his last pupil. Her studies in Venice were meant, more or less, to complete her skills (cf. Carlina Ribecchi Riperata, Ceramiche a Venezia - Neera Gatti pittrice e ceramista, Venezia 1978). Their meeting happened in the fabulous Villa Ferrari in San Daniele del Carso; for the very young Neera the 65-year-old Architect became simply "uncle Max". Their acquaintance soon turned into a deep friendship, which lasted until the end of Fabiani's life.
In the second half of the '30s Neera Gatti frescoed part of Rifenbergo church (Slovenia), restored by Fabiani himself, and part of the church in Locavizza (Aidussina - SLO) that the Architect built in 1934. Finally, in 1938 she frescoed the Main Hall (or Reception Hall) of the castle of San Daniele del Carso, one of Fabiani's conceptually most important works where he turned the almost thousand-year-old building into a civic centre. The castle at San Daniele was destroyed during the Second World War and the current restoration work doesn't follow Fabiani's plan. As regards its large fresco, the preliminary stencils still exist (and are probably worth exhibiting) and they are without any doubt Neera Gatti's best painting work. Finally, in 1959, the 94-year-old "uncle Max" gave the by now internationally known Venetian ceramist, the drawings for the conversion of the inner spaces of San Trovaso in Venice. These represent his last architectural work, whose flowing spaces are amazingly modern and comfortable.
It would truly be a challenge to organize an exhibition of the tiny watercolours by an architect and deeply cultured man who in the second decade of the century was temporarily Professor in "Interior Ornamental" and then regular Prof. in "Architectural Composition" at the Technical University in Vienna, which at that time boasted the title of "First School of the Empire".
The message found in the language of these cards is certainly out of sync with mainstream culture. But, bearing in mind Vico's theory of historical repetition and taking into account the artist's previous innovative experiences, from certain points of view, these card-based meditations seem to be way ahead their time.
The didactic cards sent to Neera Gatti - almost all of them with a postmark - have been brought together with those belonging to different private collections. The first watercolour may date back to the First World War period, when the old Europe - his Europe - was about to collapse. The last one was finished in 1961 and it was highly auspicious of the 96-year-old Architect to preserve the natural order of the physical aspect of his city, Gorizia. The other cards deal with a wide range of musings on architecture, politics, antiquity, the reworking of pre-existing structures, the historic town and the geometrical structures found in the "aeropittura" movement belonging to the second wave of futurism, not to mention relationships with the "triangles" of the group of artists that included Klee, Macke and Marc who around 1912 learnt from Delaumay in Paris the concept of the permeation of colours and cubic forms. We find (written on the back) funny, often biting personal analysis, travel notes, random thoughts, symbolic phrases.
I don't know whether this material has any real artistic value, that would be a question for the critics. My previous research on the significance of Fabiani's work to the culture of this part of Europe is not the best starting point to judge his painting. Moreover, to quote C.L. Ragghianti, it is an autonomous language that sometimes borders on poetry and, at least in my opinion, often transcends the mere technical aspect of such an activity.
To underline his true status as an architect and not as a painter, it was thought desirable to exhibit a previously unseen plan for the layout of the Valle del Corno in Gorizia, dated 1948. It is an aerial view of the volumetric aspect of the area complete with all of the visual tangencies which is highly significant. The perspective is drawn with fountain pen and lightly tinted with watercolour, showing how for Fabiani, town planning has always to be done within a wider context, an approach to which the militant culture seems to be returning, if we take into consideration the laborious and strict axonometry of recent town planning designs.
Max Fabiani was born in 1865 in Cobidil, a village near San Daniele del Carso, to a family of Italian origin. After attending primary school in San Daniele, he gained the final science school-leaving certificate at the Realschule in Ljubljana. Then, in 1883, he entered the Technical University in Vienna where he studied architecture, receiving in 1892 the Diplom Architekt (Degree in Architecture). In 1896 he began his academic career at the Technical University as assistant to Professor Karl Konig in the course of Composition and in 1898 he became professor of History of Ancient Architecture. Collaborator and colleague of the architect Otto Wagner, between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Fabiani took part in the renovation of artistic works in Vienna, and worked on the town plan to rebuild Ljubljana, destroyed by an earthquake in 1895.
He later moved to Gorizia where he devoted himself to rebuilding the city devastated by the events in the First World War (he drafted the plan of reconstruction in 1921), a project that would force him to abandon his academic duties at Vienna Technical University. From then onward he lived in the Gorizia area where, among other things, he taught Art History in the secondary schools of the city and where he built a series of buildings. He died in Gorizia in 1962.
Vienna still retains his most important architectural works; among these we should mention the Portois & Fix building, the Palmers Palace, the Artarìa Palace and the Urania building.
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Istituto per gli Incontri Culturali Mitteleuropei
via Mazzini 20, 34170 Gorizia, Italy - tel. +39 0481 535085 fax: +39 0481 536600
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