The Italian Connection: Luigi Bonazza
Portrait of Italia Bertotti (Ritratto di Italia Bertotti), 1923
Oil on canvas
165 × 75 cm
©Mart (Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto), Rovereto – On loan from a private collection

Gustav Klimt exerted a massive influence on Italian artists, especially in northeastern cultural centers like Venice, Trieste, Trento, and Verona. This relationship operated in two directions. During his travels through Italy, Klimt became deeply enraptured by ancient national heritage. The historic mosaics of Ravenna and the interior decoration of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice directly enlightened him and shaped his famous golden style.

In turn, a younger generation of Italian artists looked toward Vienna. This artistic dialogue between the two regions peaked after Klimt’s landmark exhibition at the 1910 Venice Biennale. While Italian masters like Giovanni Segantini had heavily influenced the early Vienna Secession around 1900, it was this later modern style that captured the imagination of northeastern painters in the 1910s and 1920s.

Luigi Bonazza (1877–1965) developed into a prominent indirect student of Klimt’s artistic circle ahead of his contemporaries. Born in Arco di Trento, he moved to the Austrian capital to attend the Kunstgewerbeschule from 1898 to 1901. He studied under Franz von Matsch, who managed the Künstlercompagnie studio alongside Gustav and Ernst Klimt. Bonazza also trained under Felician von Myrbach, a founding member of the Vienna Secession. During these formative years, Bonazza absorbed the new Jugendstil language and the symbolic taste of the Viennese avant-garde, fusing dreams, classical myths, and allegories into his personal style.

From Fluid Curves to Rigid Shapes

This 1923 portrait of the fifteen-year-old Italia Bertotti demonstrates a clear stylistic shift away from the earlier Italian Liberty style. The fluid, sinuous curves typical of contemporary artists like Galileo Chini disappeared from Bonazza’s canvas. Instead, a more rigid and solid form of the figure emerged. The contours of the young woman feature fewer curves and sharper edges, creating a sense of granite-like immobility. His palette heavily favored deep blues, darkness, and a dramatic sense of depth.

To bring his colors to life, Bonazza relied on an intensive pointillist technique. From a distance, the composition flows smoothly, but a closer look reveals an endless expanse of tiny, meticulously placed colored dots that enhance the luminosity of the hair and fabric. Just as Klimt often did in his society portraits, Bonazza reduces the ornamentation to focus entirely on transforming the young woman into a beautiful, timeless decorative object.

The Concept of Total Art

Bonazza fully embraced the concept of total art (Gesamtkunstwerk), a founding design principle of the Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte. This philosophy found its ultimate expression in the physical decoration of his own home, the Villa Bonazza in Trento. He personally designed the entire property, creating massive allegorical paintings like Notturno and Aurora to cover the walls alongside customized furniture and everyday household objects.

Beyond his canvas work, Bonazza proved to be a highly skilled printmaker. Between 1906 and 1910, he created his famous Jovis Amores series in Vienna, a sequence of ten detailed aquatint and drypoint etchings on steel that he successfully exhibited at the Vienna Secession in 1906. This 1923 portrait remained inside the private collection of the Bertotti descendants for decades before being placed on long-term loan at the Mart museum in Rovereto, where it stands as a central monument of Trentino modern art.