VASTO: Fount of Artistic Talent
The town of Vasto in the province of Chieti in the region of Abruzzo has been the birthplace of numerous accomplished artists. This is especially remarkable for a town of about 40,000 near the Adriatic coast. AMHS Executive Board member Joseph “Sonny” Scafetta, Jr., whose father hailed from Vasto, has profiled several notable painters and writers with roots in his ancestral hometown.)
Gabriele Smargiassi was born in the city of Vasto in the province of Chieti in the region of Abruzzo, Italy, on July 22, 1798. As a teenager, he wanted to be a priest like one of his uncles. However, his parents recognized his artistic talent and convinced him to try painting as a profession. By the time Gabriele turned 19 years old in 1817, his parents had scraped together enough money to send him to Naples to be trained in the private studio of Giuseppe Cammarano. Gabriele soon moved to the private studio of Anton Sminck van Pitloo for whom he worked painting rural landscapes in the evenings for the next seven years after completing his day classes in the Neapolitan Academy of Fine Arts, where van Pitloo was employed as the Professor of Landscape Painting
After achieving success and recognition in Paris, Smargiassi spent the rest of his life as a painter and professor in Naples.
In 1824, Smargiassi received a scholarship from the Academy to go to Rome to practice painting the ruins of that eternal city. When his scholarship funds ran out, he stayed in Rome rather than return to Naples. To support himself in Rome, Smargiassi gave private art lessons to the children of parents in high society. One of his students was Louis-Philippe, the future King of France. After four years in Rome, Smargiassi moved in 1828 to Zurich, Switzerland, but four months later relocated to Paris. Smargiassi achieved great success and international recognition in the French capital. In 1831, he was awarded the gold medal at the London Exposition. Upon his return to Paris, the French King bestowed upon him the prestigious Legion of Honor medal. The 33-year old Smargiassi then began to be patronized in Paris by the Salon of the Duchess of Saint Leu. In 1837, his mentor, van Pitloo, died in Naples.
The Neapolitan Academy of Fine Arts searched for a worthy candidate to succeed van Pitloo and convinced Smargiassi to return to Naples to fill the chair of Professor of Landscape Painting. Smargiassi accepted in 1838 with an understanding that he could maintain a private studio outside of the Academy, just like van Pitloo had done. The most notable patron of his studio was the Count of Aquila from Abruzzo, while his most successful students were Francesco Mancini, Alfonso Simonetti, Raimondo Scoppa, and the obstreperous fellow vastese, Giuseppe Palizzi (see below), who left the Academy in a huff in 1844. Smargiassi stayed in Naples for the rest of his life performing the dual roles of Professor of Landscape Painting and owner of a private art studio for 44 years. He died in Naples on May 12, 1882, about two months before his 84th birthday. He never married. His surviving paintings of rural landscapes remain in the main art galleries and the royal palaces of Europe.
Sources,
both accessed September 26, 2020:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_Smargiassi
https://vastesiworld.org/listing/smargiassigabriele
Giuseppe Palizzi was born on March 19,1812, in the town of Lanciano in theprovince of Chieti in the region of Abruzzo. He was named Giuseppe by hisparents because he was born on thefeast day of San Giuseppe. When hewas three years old, his parents movedtheir family to Vasto which was a larger city on the coast of the Adriatic Sea.
Here along the seacoast, he began to show his artistic abilities from a very early age. After he turned 23 years old in 1835, Palizzi moved to Naples and enrolled at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts where he came into contact with the painters of the Posillipo School. There he presented historical landscapes at the yearly shows of the Institute. However, being intolerant of rules and expected mannerisms, after nine years in Naples, the 32-year old Giuseppe pulled up roots and relocated to Paris in 1844. After a short period, he decided to move to the village of Bourron-Marlotte which was located on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau outside of Paris
Palizzi is known for his nature paintings created in France and Italy. He later became intrigued by the newfangled art of photography.
This forest became the primary subject of his painting which developed in the direction of painstaking realism through the influence of the Barbizon School. Giuseppe kept in communication by letter with his younger brother Filippo who had stayed back in Vasto. In his letters, Giuseppe shared with Filippo the results of his artistic explorations. For ten years, Giuseppe exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon. In 1854, he made a short trip to Naples to visit his friends there, followed by a short stay in Vasto to visit family members and to sketch local pastoral scenes outside of the city. Before the year was up, he returned to Paris where he achieved great success with pastoral landscapes inspired by his stay in Vasto. His paintings from this period often included figures of humble laborers. In 1859, he was made a member of the Legion of Honor by the French Government. Three years later in 1862, he traveled to Rome to receive the Cross of the Knights of Saint Maurice and Saint Lazarus from the new Italian Government. Upon his return to the Paris suburbs, Palizzi immersed himself in his work and dedicated himself to painting directly from nature. He also undertook intensive activities with various artistic organizations in the French capital.
While doing so, he made contact with the main artists and intellectuals of the period. He was further intrigued by the newfangled art of photography and its ability to capture precisely the images of the operator. Towards the end of his career, he befriended many painters of the impressionistic circle, but he declined to adopt their new style of painting, which, as he stated in one of his last letters to his brother, he considered “imprecise.” A lifelong bachelor, Giuseppe died in Paris on January 14, 1888, about two months shy of his 76th birthday. His surviving paintings remain in the principal European art galleries and in private collections.
Sources:
Vasto Domani at page 5, October, 1988.
https://vastesiworld.org/listing/palizzi-giuseppe, accessed September 25, 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Palizzi, accessed September 26, 2020
Francesco Paolo Votinelli was born on October 13, 1891, in Vasto. His father Domenico was a city guard and his mother, Rosalind Giosi, made pasta making instruments which she sold locally. At the age of 17, Votinelli traveled to Naples where he boarded the ship “Indiana” which arrived at Ellis Island in New York on March 29, 1909.
Francesco Paolo Votinelli
He found work as an apprentice to a tailor, and, in the evenings after work, he began to write poetry. Votinelli also began to go to meeting places of the vastesi community in the city of New York. As a young bachelor, he began to be invited to feast day events for various saints, wedding ceremonies, and wedding anniversary parties. As his poetic ability became known, Votinelli was often asked to write a poem which he would recite at the event, earning him the nickname “l’origano” (the oregano) because he added “spice” to these occasions.
Votinelli became popular for his poetry recitals at various celebrations and gatherings. At one of these, he recited his masterpiece about his hometown of Vasto.
In one of these evening gatherings between friends, he recited a poem which would become his masterpiece “Vasto bello e terra d’oro” (Vasto beautiful and land of gold). Encouraged by his friends, he self-published a small book of his poems with his masterpiece being the title of the book and the first poem in the volume. The book sold well in the vastesi community in New York and eventually in other vastesi communities in the United States, Argentina, Canada, and Australia. After a few years, his masterpiece became the worldwide hymn of vastesi recalling with sadness their home town which they had left many years ago. Due to the success of his little book of poems as well as his success as a tailor, he was able to afford to marry Maddalena Fasolino who was an emigrant from Sicily. They had two children. Then, Maddalena died in 1965. Left alone at the age of 74, Votinelli was pushed by an irresistible desire to see again the land of his birth. Thus, later in 1965 he moved back to Vasto where he spent the last four years of his life. He died there due to lung complications on November 14, 1969, and was buried in the local city cemetery.
Sources:
https://vastesiworld.org/listing/votinelli
https://vastogallery.blogspot.com/p/Francesco-Paolo-Votinelli
Giovanni Del Prete was born in Vasto on October 5, 1897. When he was 12 years old, he emigrated with his parents from Vasto and they settled in a district called La Boca in the capital city of Buenos Aires in Argentina. There he learned Spanish. The impressionable young boy fell in love with the neighboring district called Riachuelo and its brightly colored buildings. When he finished high school in 1915, Del Prete and his parents became naturalized citizens of Argentina. At the same time, Giovanni changed his given name to Juan.
During the time he was working with his father who was a boot maker, Juan began to teach himself abstract art and studied at the nearby Perugino Academy in his spare time. After seven years, he opened his own art studio at Vuelta del Rocha in the capital. The major part of his initial works was of the figurative type and included works with a landscape theme. In 1926, he had his first art exhibit under the auspices of the Friends of Art Association whose members were so impressed with his works that they conferred on him a scholarship so that he could continue to develop his talent abroad. After some hesitation about where to go, he finally decided in 1929 to go to Paris where he learned French. Juan burst upon the art scene in Paris in 1930 when he participated in three exhibitions at the Salon of the Southern Independents, the First Exposition of the Latino-American Group, and the Zak Gallery, the last being a one-man show. In 1931, he had another one-man show at the Vavin-Raspail Gallery. In 1932, he became a member of the Abstraction Creation Group and had his works exhibited in the Salon of the New Realities and the Diana Castelucho Gallery.
His production during this period included mostly colored geometric compositions. When Adolf Hitler came to power in neighboring Germany in 1933, Juan feared that there would be another war in Europe so he left Paris to return to Buenos Aires. After he reopened his art studio in the capital city, his production may be characterized principally by experimentation in a variety of modernist styles. Also, he met Eugenia Crenovich (1905-1990) who was another painter.
In 1977, Del Prete donated 107 paintings to the Vasto Art Museum where they may still be seen.
They wed in 1937 and formed a significant artistic pair in Argentina. The couple had no children. After the wedding, Juan began to develop a new and personal nonfigurative style which he called Futucubism which was a blend of Futurism and Cubism. As a result of this development, he was regularly invited to exhibit his latest works at the Biennale in Venice. On April 11, 1977, he embarked on the Italian ship Marconi with 107 of his paintings bound for the port of Vasto so that he could donate them to the Vasto Art Museum where they may still be seen. After his return to Buenos Aires, he continued to work for another ten years until he died there on February 14, 1987, at the age of 89.
Sources,
both accessed September 26, 2020:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Del_Prete
https://vastesiworld.org/listing/del-pretejuan
Filandro Lattanzio was born in Vasto on November 21, 1908. When he was only ten years old, his father sent him after school to go to work with a blacksmith who taught Filandro the rudiments of design. However, health problems did not permit him to do heavy work, so he stopped the apprenticeship when he turned 14 and was legally allowed to quit school. A local poet, Romualdo Pantini, took an interest in the teenager and set him on a long and fruitful artistic path. For example, Pantini once took young Filandro on a long walk to the nearby community of Monteodorisio to see some works by the painter, Francesco Paolo Michetti, in the house of the wealthy Suriani family. Basically self-taught, Filandro completed his first works in a figurative style in the early 1920s. In 1925 at the age of 16, he sold his first painting entitled “The Cliff of Scaramuzza” to the Marchesa Pignatelli of Naples. In 1928 at the age of 19, he was drafted into the Italian Army. His military service in Florence, where he was stationed, allowed him to become
acquainted with the great Renaissance painters, as well as with the local painters of the Macchiaioli School. After he was discharged from the army in 1930, he returned to Vasto where he took part in various exhibitions and sold more works to tourists to earn a living. In 1935, he moved to Rome where he familiarized himself with the innovations of the Roman School while he continued to exhibit in national shows. In 1940, he was recalled into service by the Italian Army and was sent to France. When Italy switched sides from the Axis Powers to the Allies in September 1943, the Nazis took the men of his unit as prisoners of war, first to Belgium, then to Holland, and finally to Germany, where the unit was freed in May, 1945.
Lattanzio completed his early works in a figurative style, but later works display the influence of cubism.
At first, Lattanzio returned to his family home in Vasto. However, in 1948, he moved to Chambery in the province of Savoy in France. There the 39-year old painter met and married Helene Castex. The couple had no children. Their frequent visits to Paris led him to undertake what he called his “Cubist” adventure which, in turn, led him to adopt an artistic, impressionistic style. During his 20 years of living in France, he constantly sold paintings shown in national exhibitions. In 1968 at the age of 59, Lattanzio decided to return permanently to his beloved home town of Vasto where he opened a studio in Via Adriatica and began a new expressive period painting local landscapes with a nostalgic mood. He also dedicated himself to religious themes. Two of his most important religious works are “The Madonna of the Seven Sorrows” and “Saint Anna”. Lattanzio died in Vasto on January 13, 1986, at the age of 77. Two years later, his widow donated to the Vasto City Art Museum 20 of his unsold paintings, including his self-portrait, shown here from 1933, when he was 24 years old.
Sources,
both accessed September 26, 2020:
Pietro di Donato was born on April 3, 1911, in West Hoboken (now Union City), New Jersey. He was the eldest of eight children born to his parents, Geremio and Annunziata Cinquina di Donato, who had emigrated from Vasto. Geremio worked as a brick layer. On March 30, 1923, four days before Pietro’s 12th birthday, Geremio was killed when the wall of a building where he was working collapsed on him. After his father’s funeral, Pietro quit the seventh grade to join a building trade union in order to help support his family. He kept his union membership his entire life. When his mother died a few years later, Pietro became fully responsible for his seven siblings. During a strike, Pietro wandered into a library and discovered the works of the Italo-French novelist, Emile Zola, who inspired him to write about his own experiences in the Italian immigrant community. He then started to take evening classes in construction and engineering at the local city college. After Pietro earned promotions and after some of his younger siblings also began to work, the eight children were able to move to Northport on Long Island.
‘Christ in Concrete,’ a novel by di Donato based on his earlier short story, landed on best-seller lists in 1939.
After the Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in Massachusetts in 1927, Pietro was motivated to join the Young Communist League and began writing in his spare time. In March 1937, Esquire magazine published Pietro’s blue-collar, proletarian, short story “Christ in Concrete” about Italian-American construction workers during the Great Depression. Pietro expanded the short story into a full-length novel which landed on best-seller lists in 1939 and was chosen for the Book of the Month Club. When Italy and Germany declared war on the United States in December 1941, Pietro registered as a conscientious objector and was sent to work as a forester in a Quaker camp in Cooperstown, New York. There he met Helen Dean whom he married in 1943, in a ceremony performed by New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
After the war ended, the couple moved to the town of Setauket on Long Island where they had two sons, Peter Jr. and Richard. In 1949, Pietro’s novel was adapted into the film “Give Us This Day” which won an award at the Venice Film Festival later that year. In 1958, Pietro published his second novel “This Woman” which was a sequel to “Christ in Concrete.” In 1960, he published his third novel “Three Circles of Light” which was a prequel to “Christ in Concrete.” Later that same year, he published a biography “Immigrant Saint: The Life of Mother Cabrini” which became a selection of the Catholic Book Club and the Maryknoll Book Club. Two years later, he published another biography “The Penitent” about the killer of 12-year-old Maria Goretti. Pietro’s next book-length work was “Naked Author” which was a collection of short stories that appeared in 1970. His last published article was “Christ in Plastic” which was printed in Penthouse magazine in 1978 about the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, leader of the Christian Democratic Party in Italy. It won an award from the Overseas Press Club. Pietro died of bone cancer on January 19, 1992, at the age of 80 in Stony Brook on Long Island. His last unpublished novel “The American Gospels” appeared posthumously in 2000.
Sources:
Contemporary Authors, volume 101 at pages 141 and 142 (1981). Voce Italiana, at page 3 (July 2011).
https://vastesiworld.org/listing/1911, accessed September 25, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_di_Donato, accessed September 30, 2020