Umberto Moggioli (Trento 1886 - Rome 1919) in 1904 he enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice with the help of patron Antonio Tambosi, who followed the advice of Eugenio Prati and Bartolomeo Bezzi after seeing a small landscape when he was sixteen. While studying in Venice he has strong suggestions in architecture, painting and landscape combined with the study of painters of the past such as Titian, Tintoretto and Tiepolo.
He was graduated in 1907 nad he starts in 1908 for his first stay in Rome to attend night school of French nude, while he continues painting the true landscape, close to his desire for solitude and meditation.
In 1909 he exhibited at the Biennale of Venice and in Burano he works with Pieretto Bianco for the decoration of fourteen panels of the Pavilion of the Giardini di Castello (1909-1910) .
He and his wife moved in 1911 to Burano, where he met the critic Barbantini, director of the Ca' Pesaro and the painters Gino Rossi, Tullio Garbari, Luigi Scopinich, Pio Semeghini and Felice Casorati. In this climate Moggioli produces some of his masterpieces as "Il ponte verde" (1911), "Cipresso Gemello" (1912) and "Primavera a Mazzorbo" (1913), depicting quiet and lonely places, close to his contemplative attitude. After the first exhibition at Ca' Pesaro (1912), he also exposes in Rome with Vettore Zanetti-Zilla at the First Secession Roman (1913 and 1914).
The Venetian period was interrupted in 1915 when Moggioli, bound by fraternal friendship Cesare Battisti, enlisted as a volunteer in the Legion Trentino of Verona. As a cartographer he is posted on the front in Vallagarina Trent, where he deals with surveys, plans and models until 1916, when he is reformed by a serious illness. The hills of Garda lake and Cavaion of Verona are portrayed by Moggioli convalescent, influenced by primitivism lines of Tullio Garbari and colors of Gino Rossi.
Towards the end of 1916 he moved to Rome with his wife Anna, where he settled in one of the studio of Villa Strolh-Fern, meeting Renato Brozzi and musician Barilli. During this period Moggioli worked with Antonio Rizzi for the cartoons for the mosaics in the lunettes of the monument to Vittorio Emanuele II (1916-1917). With contacts with the Rome environmental, his artistic activity becomes more intense: the colors used tend to be more clear and bright and the favorite subjects are figures made with solid volume, interior scenes and landscapes with limited horizons.
Moggioli died at 32 from the Spanish flu struck Jan. 26, 1919 in Rome.
On 2012 the exhibition "Umberto Moggioli - Primitiva bellezza del paesaggio" at the Civic Museum, Palazzo della Ragione, of Asolo with works about twenty of the most significant period of Asolo area. |
