Duilio Cambellotti

Duilio Cambellotti (1876-1960) was born in Rome, the son of a wood carver. He briefly studied accounting -- one of those many doomed attempts by born artists to go straight -- but then switched to design school, where he spent the years 1895 to 1898. Also like many other artists, he liked to claim that he was really self-taught and had learned nothing in school, and sometimes he even denied that he had ever studied art.

He did just about everything that might fall under the heading of applied art: illustration, stained glass, ceramics, furniture, poster design, engraving, theater and film sets. His work is usually classified at Art Nouveau, and he was a great admirer of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. He has been called "a creative spirit of multiform ingenuity" and also one of the greatest artists of twentieth century Italy. This photo of the artist is on display in the Cambellotti museum, Latina.

I love these bowls, which I found on an excellent tumblr called Vertigo1871 -- it was these that started me researching Cambellotti.

Relief of horses, done by Cambellotti in plaster in 1910, cast in bronze in 1984 for a public fountain in Terracina, where Cambellotti spent much of his last years.

From the Arabian Nights.

Stained glass.

Illustrations.

Poster design from 1917.

Mural in the Associazione Nazionale Mutilati ed Invalidi di Guerra (National Association of War Invalids), Siracusa, Sicily.

Stained glass from La Casina delle Civette (House of the Owls), Rome. About 1914.

I haven't found anything that explicitly describes Cambellotti's politics, although I have found a few of his works in collections of Fascist art. He doesn't seem to have been very active politically, although various more active fascists show up among his friends and collaborators. But one of the works he illustrated was a collection of the Legends of Rome, and based on these pictures I am going to go out on a limb and say that at least in 1927 he was a thoroughgoing Fascist. Amazing images, though.