Alberto Martini and the imagery of Poe on display in Oderzo, on the 70th anniversary of the artist's death

Through March 25, 2025, Oderzo is hosting a major exhibition on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the death of Alberto Martini (Oderzo, 1876 - Milan, 1954), an artist born in this city, where the Pinacoteca dedicated to him is located. The exhibition, entitled Extraordinary Stories. Alberto Martini and Edgar Allan Poe, is held at Palazzo Foscolo and is curated by Paola Bonifacio and Alessandro Botta, with scientific coordination by Carlo Sala. Promoted by the Fondazione Oderzo Cultura and included among the Great Events of the Veneto Region, under the patronage of the Municipality of Oderzo, the exhibition brings together more than 120 works, including paintings, drawings and volumes, many of them unpublished or never exhibited before, from museums, prestigious private collections and the artist’s heirs. Organized by Villaggio Globale International, the exhibition also features a selection of drawings that Martini made inspired by the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, brought together for the first time in such a large corpus.

The exhibition opens with the 1914Self-Portrait and the famous Lucifer, taken from the illustrations of The Divine Comedy. Some of the artist’s earliest works, dating from the last years of the 19th century, highlight, on the one hand, his strong ties to the Treviso countryside and, on the other, his sensitivity to the living conditions of workers and the humbler social classes. For the first time, the sketch on cardboard and the large oil on canvas depicting anAntica gualchiera trevigiana, dedicated to wool processing, are exhibited together. This is followed by drawings from the cycle The Courts of Miracles, inspired by Victor Hugo, and the Poem of Labor, composed on Martini’s original subjects. In these early works, as well as in theAlbo della morte, a style emerges that recalls 16th-century Nordic graphic art, combining macabre imagery with an epic tone, between symbolist visions of nature and a poetic narrative charged with social tension.

In these same years, Martini approached theillustration of literary texts, creating a series of celebrated heroicomic drawings for Tassoni’s La Secchia Rapita (actually 252 plates), a selection of which will be on view in the exhibition.

A crucial role in his career was played by his meeting with Vittorio Pica, a Neapolitan art critic and one of the founders of the Venice Biennale, of which he was secretary general from 1920 to 1928. The exhibition pays tribute to this association by displaying the Ex libris created for Pica and presented at the 1905 Biennale, alongside the oil on canvas La Fiaccola, never before exhibited in Italy. This symbolist work, full of allegorical references, testifies to the strong link between painting and drawing in Martini’s production.

The itinerary continues with two drawings from the cycle La parabola dei celibi, presented in Venice in 1904: images with a strong dreamlike impact, immersed in nocturnal atmospheres, that deal with the theme of femininity as a corrupting force, a typical vision of international symbolism. The same tension emerges in Moon in the Dead Lagoon. Martini, a multifaceted and visionary artist and advocate of total art, found one of his greatest expressions in the Symbolist oils destined for the Sala del Sogno at the Seventh International Art Exhibition in Venice in 1907. In Sleep, Diavolessa and Notturno are brought together on this occasion for the second time since the historic Biennale, twelve years after the last joint exhibition. In these works, the landscape is transformed into a projection of the state of mind. Despite the controversy that led to the exclusion of Diavolessa from the Biennale, Martini continued his artistic journey with new creations, including pastels made between 1912 and 1913, characterized by the recurring theme of butterflies, and lithographs on stone from 1915, such as The Kiss and The Mouth.

Alberto Martini and Foreign Literature

Another section of the exhibition explores Martini’s strong connection to foreign literature, as well as his interest in theater. This strand, already evident in La parabola dei celibi, culminates in the visionary invention of Tetiteatro in 1923. The exhibition includes drawings inspired by Shakespearean tragedies, such as Hamlet and Macbeth, which anticipate the macabre and disturbing aesthetic of the illustrations dedicated to Poe. Original drawings of Heart of Wax, exhibited in 1985, are also on display.

During his career, Martini forged relationships with important cultural figures of the time, from Filippo Tommaso Marinetti to Gabriele D’Annunzio, from Margherita Sarfatti to Luisa Casati Stampa. For the Marchesa, between 1912 and 1934, he produced twelve portraits, in an association that profoundly influenced both.

Edgar Allan Poe’s Extraordinary Tales.

However, the artist’s most ambitious project remains the cycle of illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s Extraordinary Tales, consisting of 105 drawings made between 1905 and 1908 and then continuously until 1936. Martini did not merely illustrate the texts, but created a veritable visual poem, interpreting and amplifying the imagery of the American writer. His imagination is expressed through hallucinated visions and macabre details, creating a dreamlike universe that has fascinated entire generations.

Works such as The Descent into the Maelstrom, The Plague King, The Raven, The Mask of the Red Death and The Black Cat are presented alongside some of the earliest Italian illustrations of Poe’s tales, including Édouard Manet ’s drawings for Le Corbeau (1875) and those by Gaetano Previati exhibited at the 1901 Biennale.

Poe’s writing opens up new horizons for Martini, enriching his visual repertoire with skeletons, monsters and ghostly figures. The artist develops a unique expressive language, mirroring an ideal dialogue with the writer. Both analyze detail to the point of obsession, explore the double and the unconscious, immersing themselves in a magnetic and surreal atmosphere.

Closing the exhibition is a series of self-portraits made between 1928 and 1929, including L’uomo che crea, Conversazione con i miei fantasmi and L’esprit travaille, in which Martini depicts himself as a demiurge, confirming his adherence to an esoteric and alchemical aesthetic much in vogue in Europe.

After his years in Paris, where he moved in 1926 in search of greater recognition, Martini returned to Milan in 1934, living his last years in financial straits. He died on November 8, 1954. His last self-portrait, Psyche’s Window in the Poet’s House, closes the exhibition as an artistic testament and symbol of the existential anxieties of the first half of the 20th century.

The exhibition is open Tuesday through Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 to 5 p.m.; Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 to 7 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 7 p.m.

Alberto Martini and the imagery of Poe on display in Oderzo, on the 70th anniversary of the artist's death

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