Jacquard N°82

This issue of Jacquard opens with the second part of the study of Anita Pittoni, a Triestine artist whose expression over the course of her creative life, from 1927 to 1948, encompassed a variety of components. The first part, published in our last issue, examined the historical, folkloristic and primitivist traditions that characterised her ‘implosive’ models; here, the author examines ‘explosive’ models of avant-garde matrix influenced by the coeval debate in art; for example, Futurist or Constructivist fashion.

The next essay compares 15th- and 16th-century pictorial works on panel from Sardinia, the Iberian peninsula and Flanders having in common decorative textile motifs expressing the recurring iconography of the period and which in turn influenced production of precious velvets.

Study of the furnishings of a 19th-century aristocratic chapel draws us into the realm of excellently-crafted ecclesiastical vestments and valuable fabrics and embroideries.

Next is a ‘poorer’ art: oleographic prints on fabric. These works comprise an extensive heritage formed from the late 19th century through about the 1950s, when families purchased these low-priced works of devotional art for their home spaces and especially to adorn the bedrooms.

We took the occasion offered by restoration of a fragment of a tapestry showing a male figure  transporting a large jar to indulge in a brief reflection on the age-old custom of carrying heavy loads on the back or the head and its representation in tapestry weaving. 

In the ‘Fiber Art’ category, we take a look at two artists. The first was a front-line exponent of the genre, Maria Lai, whose art is at the centre of a personal exhibition at Florence’s Palazzo Pitti focusing on the theme of the ‘thread’: a fundamental aspect of the Sardinian artist’s work and a recurring theme in her creations. The second, Sanja Spasić, is a young and promising member of the new generations in art; she uses felted wool for her ‘emotional’ works, creations in which the tactile and visual sensorial components develop a new way of conceiving and creating sculpture.