Alberto Sartoris

The exhibition takes a fresh look at the figure of the architect and critic Alberto Sartoris as a communicator of the ideals of modernity during the twenties and thirties. The 250 exhibits include models, photographs, plans, paintings, ceramics and designs for textiles and graphics which in many cases come from documentary archives of previously unpublished material connected with architects involved in the International Modern movement. From Sartoris’s collection of art the relationships between architecture and the plastic arts are reconstructed, and the activities of the avant-garde and relationships between groups and magazines of the time are also studied. The catalogue published to accompany the exhibition contains reproductions of the works displayed, together with texts by Antonio Bonet Correa, Christian Perazzone and María Isabel Navarro Segura. Alberto Sartoris (Turin, 1901 – Cossonay Ville, Switzerland, 1998) presents many different identities—as architect, as author of graphic designs, clothing and furniture, as a critic of architecture and the arts, and also as an active member of various avant-garde movements on the international scene, having relationships with Italy, Switzerland, France and Spain especially, and playing a fundamental part in the diffusion of architecture and the arts. The main aim of the exhibition is to present different ways of looking at the process that took place between 1926 and 1942, the period when Sartoris’s particular identity was formed, through which we can also see the vicissitudes suffered by various avant-garde movements before the Second World War and during its aftermath. The multi-disciplinary nature of Sartoris’s approach, the variety of his interests, the breadth of his work and the wide geographical range of his contacts form a complex picture which cannot be summed up in a single view. His many-sidedness calls for numerous approaches to examine the different focuses offered by his work and life. Alberto Sartoris played an important part in communicating the ideals of modernity during the twenties and thirties, setting out from the idea of the integration of the arts, as one of the two options highlighted by modern architecture. His successive involvement in the main avant-garde movements of the times is the main focus of the exhibition, which follows his relationships with the Novecento in Turin, the CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), the phenomenon of what was described as the second Futurist movement, the support for the visual art of the international avant-garde provided by Hélène de Mandrot’s Maison des Artistes project in La Sarraz (Switzerland), and the various movements connected with abstraction that appeared in France and Italy, such as the Elementarismo group (1928–31), Cercle et Carré (1930), Abstraction-Création (1931–36), the Union des Artistes Modernes (1930–33), Italian abstraction in the thirties, and the Gruppo Primordiale Antonio Sant’Elia (1938–45), which included the abstract artists of Como and the architect Terragni. At the same time, from a reconstruction of his own art collection it is possible to establish the relationships between architecture and the plastic arts in the twenties and thirties, and also the intersecting relationships between those groups and the magazines of the time. Sartoris is one of the representatives of modernity in whom creative and critical activity are combined. Activity as an architect, especially in the episode of rationalist architecture during the twenties and thirties in Italy, in a series of works that contributed to the international debate about ideas on standardisation: the monumental quality of modern architecture, Mediterranean aesthetics as the basis for modern architecture, the use of colour in architecture, and so on. This aspect is approached through his work, as reflected in original documentation for projects, original period photographs, models, correspondence and magazines, and also in his collection of silkscreen prints, the architettura di carta designs, one of the best-known examples of Sartoris’s creative side, in which his idea of colour as a fundamental element in modern architecture comes to the fore. This contribution, the central core of the exhibition, consists of a critical review of the figure of Sartoris as a communicator of rationalist aesthetics and architecture on the basis of a study of the publication of his text Gli elementi dell’architettura funzionale (Milan, 1932), a book/manifesto with a preface by Le Corbusier which immediately became a constant reference in the avant-garde circles of rationalist aesthetics. Coming five years after Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Internationale neue Baukunst, the publication of this selection of pictures of various constructed buildings and unconstructed projects provided the first great visual encyclopaedia of modern architecture, together with an informative programme of its ideals. Preparation of the book for publication was preceded by a laborious process of correspondence conducted over a period of five years with architects throughout the world who shared the ideals of the avant-garde. This gave rise to a considerable collection of documents, currently conserved in the Archives Donation Sartoris—École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, which include biographies, personal photographs, graphic documentation of projects and material of various kinds that was never published. Lastly, the relationship of Sartoris with Spain is an essential aspect in certain episodes of the revival of the avant-garde movements in this country. The relationships with Spain constitute a fundamental chapter in Sartoris’s biographical and professional development, extending over a lengthy period which ranges from 1928 to the very year of his death, a few months before which he had been in Tenerife to take part in the opening of the exhibition devoted to the magazine gaceta de arte, the editor of which, Eduardo Westerdahl, was his main contact in this country throughout his life. The interest of an exhibition about Sartoris in Spain lies in this continuing involvement in the process of the revival of the avant-gardes, with Sartoris acting as project intermediary, promoter of activities or critic of artists and architects. The chronological account indicates a living relationship, and the geographical range of the contacts shows a substantial involvement with Spanish culture in the broadest sense, with the vast collection of documents connected with Spain including names of architects, town planners and engineers such as Sert, Aizpurúa, Mercadal, Torroja, Coderch, Sostres, Bohigas and Alomar; art critics such as Westerdahl, Gasch and M. Goeritz; sculptors such as Ferrant, Fleitas, Oteiza, Chillida and Chirino; painters such as Miró and Millares; poets and writers such as Luis Rosales, Pedro García Cabrera, Julio Maruri and Camilo José Cela; and art historians such as Enrique Lafuente Ferrari and José Camón Aznar. In this exchange of correspondence, a significant roll-call of the Spanish culture of the century recounts the projects and difficulties of various generations in Spain through the figure of Sartoris.