102. Chioggia [cca. 1925.]

Emanuel Vidović (Split, 1870 - Split, 1953) is a Croatian painter whose monochromatic masterpiece Angelus (1906) is considered the beginning of Croatian modernism. From a young age, he worked on his artistic talent - first in Split, then at the sculptural and painting department of the Academy in Venice, and in Milan. The Italian cities of Venice and the fishing village of Chioggia marked his private and professional life. He met his wife, Amalia Baffo, in Chioggia, with whom he had nine children. He is recognizable for his landscapes - of Split, Solin, Vranjic, Venice, Chioggia. He also painted his prematurely deceased son Igor into his paintings. Later he painted still lifes with a darkened palette, as well as the interiors of studios and churches of Split with a slowly lightened palette. Three years before his death, he suffered from a femur fracture and during that period he often painted from memory. He also made caricatures for the satirical magazine Duje Balavac. He met Chioggia in his twenties, when he spent his autumns there whenever he saved some money. He would wander around the town and make studies from nature when his works with an Impressionist palette were created. Although from sunny Split, he was more attracted to the gloominess and dark tones of rainy autumn days in Chioggia. An oil on canvas created in 1910 depicts the most famous canal in Chioggia - the Vena canal - also known as Little Venice due to its similarity with Venetian canals. The view is typically blurred, melancholic, and mysterious, like in the fog of water vapor, without human figures. The sea, houses, and sky seem to merge into one mass. The composition is dark and closed, with emphasized verticals of architecture. Dominant are typical tones for this period in Vidović's work - brown, black, dark green. The oil on canvas is signed in the bottom left corner.

Dimensions

width 76 cm, height 60.5 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed lower left, in red, "E. VIDOVIĆ"

Research information

The work was displayed at Igor Zidić's retrospective exhibition, "Emanuel Vidović", Museum space, Zagreb, 1987, and it is catalogued on page 140, cat. no. 75 under the title "Canal Vena".

Dating

cca. 1925.

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