Alfredo Protti (1882-1949) The Porcelaines

Alfredo Protti

(Bologna 1882- Bologna 1949)

This work, signed and dated “5.3.1924”, belongs to the artist’s mature phase. The subject is a young woman, dressed in green; with lively and broad brushstrokes Protti manages to capture the chiffon flounces of the dress and the vaporous brown hair. The figure is intent on placing a set of orientalist-inspired porcelain, already present in other works by the artist such as “L’Odalisca” (1920) and in “Allo specchio” (1921/22), on a wooden tray painted with floral motifs that also serves as a container in “Il portagioie” (1925).

The artist

Alfredo Protti was born in Bologna in 1882, into a family of humble origins; his father was a steelworker. Despite this, he still managed to complete regular studies and enroll in the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, under the guidance of Domenico Ferri. A student as talented as he was undisciplined and intolerant of academicism, especially that of Rubbiani and neo-medievalism, he embraced the new ideal of an intellectual artist of his other young contemporaries, in full secessionist style.

The Secessionist Beginnings

Alfredo Protti made his debut in the spring of 1905, when he exhibited his “Portrait of the Farmer” at the collective exhibition organized by the Francesco Francia association in Bologna. This marked the beginning of a fortunate period for his artistic career: from 1906, in fact, he participated and was awarded at the six subsequent editions of the exhibition; in 1908 he was invited to the Exhibition of Fine Arts at the Permanente in Milan and the following year to the Venice Biennale. In these years the young Protti, fascinated by the suggestive and refined grace of painters such as Whistler and Sargent, mainly portrayed young women of bourgeois extraction, as in “Adolescence” (1905), where the luminous candor of the white slip, almost parallel to the shyness of the girl, stands out with chromatic force against the very dark wallpaper; or in “Blue Fan” (1906), whose protagonist stares at the observer with a scrutinizing gaze, while the crest of the fan emphasizes the curve of her lips. The Venice Biennale was the springboard for subsequent large international exhibitions, including Paris, San Francisco and Munich. In 1913 he was also a guest at the first edition of the Secession exhibitions in Rome, which ended prematurely with Italy’s entry into the war. These are years of excess freedom for Protti, who paints without refined layers and whose painting possesses a chromatic vitality that finds in the delicate sensuality of his figures the rococo of Boucher, Watteau and Fragonard, from which the artist was particularly inspired, as in the “Fiorina Addormentata” (1911).

Artistic maturity

The years following the war period are those of Protti's artistic maturity, who carries out a return to order all his own, in which the volumetric rendering of the figures recalls that of his debut, although the palette becomes more tenuous and tonal; the artist becomes a hidden observer, who naturally portrays young bourgeois women intent on their daily and casual gestures, entering the intimacy of their private rooms: Protti paints his women without idealizing them, with their thoughtful looks as in “Tigretta” (1925) or while they scrutinize themselves in the mirror (“Maschietta”, 1920).

The peculiarity of Protti's painting is his way of treating the nude, certainly seductive (as in "Tutu bianco", 1920/22 or in "Toilette" 1921), whose eroticism is sublimated in a feminine sweetness as voluptuous as it is true and tangible. There are no shadows of sin on the faces of Protti's girls, on the contrary; their faces are often portrayed from a foreshortened angle, or through the trompe l'oeil of a mirror, as in "Nuda tra i fiori" (Nude among the flowers) (1919), revealing a certain sense of modesty and a veiled and sensitive sexuality. In these years he participated in various contemporary art exhibitions, including the Turin Quadrennial, the Rome Biennial and the Fiorentina Primaverile, while in 1920 he obtained the Chair of Painting in Ravenna; Protti's introverted nature did not adapt well to teaching and he gave it up after only two years.

The last decades

At the end of the 1920s, Protti's work was set aside by his contemporaries, who were focused on new artistic trends, while in the 1930s the artist did not participate in any important exhibitions; for economic reasons, in 1931 he accepted a position at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and subsequently the Chair of Figure at the Art School of the same city, remaining there until 1940. During this period he led a quiet existence, sheltered from the spotlight, and his artistic expression changed accordingly: landscapes and tender portraits of his beloved wife began to appear in his works, as well as several exercises in various poses of their cat Tom. Alfredo Protti, who had been ill for years, passed away in Bologna in 1949.
The following year, the aforementioned association "Francesco Francia" and the Clementina Academy of Bologna created a large retrospective exhibition on the anniversary of the artist's death, and then organized another in 1971 containing 125 of his works. From May to June 1991, an anthological exhibition was held under the patronage of the municipalities of Bologna and Milan at the Palazzo della Permanente; during these decades, exhibitions alternated in private galleries in Bologna, including Galleria 56. Alfredo Protti's works are also preserved in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome and in his hometown.