An exhibition in Treviso on women's fashion and modernity between the 1800s and 1900s. Boldini, Erler, Selvatico among the protagonists

From April 13 to July 28, 2024, the Luigi Bailo Museum in Treviso is hosting the exhibition Fashion and Modernity between the 1800s and 1900s, curated by Fabrizio Malachin and promoted by the City of Treviso.

The exhibition takes as its starting point the activity of two protagonists of the Treviso and Veneto scene of that era, whom the museum wishes the general public to rediscover on the 100th and 60th anniversary of their deaths: Lino Selvatico and Giulio Ettore Erler. Artists famous in particular for their large female portraits and sensual but never vulgar nudes, which told the story of the emergence of that ’little’ middle-class world of the Veneto. The exhibition project also stems from a recent acquisition by the Civic Museums of Treviso: the vast nucleus of works, including paintings, sketches, drawings, engravings, sketches and early and preparatory works, by Lino Selvatico owned by the family, in the form of a free loan and, in part, a donation. More than fifty paintings and about three hundred graphic works, to which must be added prints and photographs used by the artist for study and, above all, the painter’s private archive, consisting of twenty-five folders of documents, diaries and handwritten letters, mostly unpublished, family photographs, the personal archive and the personal library of 1,200 volumes. A nucleus that is not currently on display and on this occasion a selection of it will be presented for the first time.

Among the protagonists of the exhibition will be Giovanni Boldini, to whom a special room will be dedicated, along with many other artists such as Cesare Laurenti, Ettore Tito, Cesare Tallone, Vittorio Corcos, Giacomo Grosso, Giacomo Favretto, Pietro Pajetta, and Eleuterio Pagliaro. Also, Alberto and Arturo Martini, Englishman John Lovery, German Franz S. von Lenboch.

Large paintings on loan from more than fifty museums and public and private collections, along with drawings, affiches (granted by the Treviso-based National Museum of the Salce Collection), engravings, sculptures, as well as clothes, fans, caps.

An exhibition intended to take the visitor into a world of intense frequentations, of great worldliness. “After the successful retrospectives on Canova and Arturo Martini and Juti Ravenna, with this exhibition we intend to further investigate our best artists active between the 19th and 20th centuries,” said Mayor Mario Conte. “That was in fact a particularly lively period for Treviso both economically, with the birth of successful businesses and economic activities, and with them a wealthy middle class, but also artistically propulsive. Just think of that group of young people who gathered around Gino Rossi and Arturo Martini. For the latter, as well as for all the real protagonists, the Venetian milieu remained the first point of reference, but with a tendency to compare themselves with more fashionable circles, Milan, Munich and Paris in particular. Treviso reaffirms, once again, its role in art with a major exhibition, promoting its own beauties and peculiarities by making its best interpreters known in a continuous investigation aimed at enriching the cultural landscape.”

For info: www.museicivicitreviso.it

Image: Cesare Saccaggi, In Babylon or Semiramis, detail (private collection)

An exhibition in Treviso on women's fashion and modernity between the 1800s and 1900s. Boldini, Erler, Selvatico among the protagonists

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