(July 26, 2017) Among the more than a hundred masterpieces by Paul Cèzanne exhibited throughout the summer (until November 19) in the great exhibition presented by Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny (Switzerland), there are some works that could be called “Italian” because they belonged to significant characters of Italian business and cultural history or because they come from Italian museums. For example, the two paintings that Egisto Paolo Fabbri, Florentine born in New York in 1866 and died in Florence in 1933, bought in Paris. His arrival in Italy and the opportunity to stay in Paris, introduced him directly to the impressionist production and in particular to Cézanne’s work. He became a Cèzanne’s work true lover as well as a passionate collector: there are 38 Cèzanne’s paintings on the walls of his Parisian apartment and almost all of them were acquired directly by Ambroise Vollard, the Parisian merchant of Cézanne.
Among them there are fifteen landscapes, two of them are now in Martigny: La Côte des Jalais à Pontoise (1878-1879), now owned by Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, and Le Hameau du Valhermeil, Auvers-sur-Oies ( 1881). Two works – Maison Parmi Les Arbres oil (1904-1906) and watercolor Rochers à Bibemus (1895-1900) – belonged to Lionello Venturi, a historian of art who moved to France in 1931 after being removed from the chair of History of Art at the University of Turin for not having accepted (one of 13 among about 1200 Italian professors) to swear allegiance to Fascism. He made in 1936 the first Catalogue Raisonné of Cezanne’s work, which was published under the title “Cézanne, son art, son oeuvre” by Paul Rosenberg, Parisian gallerist. To mark the attention of Italian collections towards Cézanne there are two other works: Le Cabanon de Jourdan (1906) – which belonged to the Milanese Riccardo Jucker (now preserved at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome) is considered the last painting by Cézanne and an Esquisse de Baigneuse (about 1900), a kind of oil-canvas design that passed from the Ambroise Vollard Collection to the Milanese Carlo Frua De Angeli and then to Luigi Magnani from Parma who destined it ( with a series of Cèzanne watercolors that he had acquired in the last decade of his life) at the Magnani Rocca Foundation, where is still preserved. (Red)
