GLAUCO CAMBON (1875-1930) - Receive artist alerts » - More items from this artist »

oil on board

signed and Dated 1907

96.00cm wide    72.00cm high    (37.80 inches wide  28.35 inches high)

The painting had been part of the art collection of Countess Luisa Feltrinelli Doria. Subsequently acquired by a private collection in Varese, Italy.

Glauco Cambon was born in Trieste in 1875, into a wealthy and cultured family. Following his scholastic education, and demonstrating a profound artistic talent, his father, a lawyer, decided to send him to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich at the age of seventeen. This was an art school renowned for its sound academic preparation and attention to drawing, but also, due to Munich rivalling Paris at that time as an avant garde art centre, it was in the forefront of artistic developments in Europe.

Although he was strongly influenced during his studies in Munich by German Realism, Symbolism, and Impressionism, he also studied and admired the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. From 1893 Glauco Cambon exhibited regularly in Trieste and in 1897 exhibited for the first time at the annual "Esposizione Internazionale di Venezia", where he continued to exhibit frequently until 1924. In 1900 he won the Rittmeyer Prize, a scholarship to Rome where he was immediately entranced by the excesses of the ‘Belle Epoque’ and its aesthetics; in particular the flamboyant fashions of the time, which he adopted with enthusiasm, becoming quite a dandy..

He returned to Trieste in 1906, and it was there in 1907 that he painted ‘Nudo di Donna’ in a technique which is rapid and loose, creating an illusion of light and shade through the use of firm but expressive brushstrokes, and showing the influence of both Post-Impressionism and the current Central European art movements, particularly the Secession of Vienna.

In 1912 Glauco Cambon won a competition to decorate the main hall of the National Bank in Trieste, but thereafter became more itinerant as portrait commissions became increasingly important. He had gained great renown for his portraits which were simultaneously psychologically intense and artistically flamboyant. He spent the years of the First World War in Milan, exhibiting his work and executing many portrait commissions, and after the War travelling to fashionable resorts such as Rapallo, Levico and Portofino, emulating the extravagant lifestyles of his wealthy clients whose portraits he painted at the various resorts.

During this period up until his death, he also painted still-lives and dream-like allegorical landscapes. Hard work and an increasingly extravagant lifestyle finally took its toll, and after a period of ill-health in 1929, Glauco Cambon died in 1930 in Biella.

Glauco Cambon exhibited extensively: as well as exhibiting regularly in Venice and Trieste, he also participated in group exhibitions in Rome, Milan, Naples, and Turin, and internationally in Paris and San Francisco. He also had five one-man shows in various towns in Italy throughout his career.