The exhibition is laid out like a picture gallery, to which the scenic rooms of the Palazzo
Franchetti are well suited. A selection of masterpieces and exemplary works in chronological
order shows the different periods of Felice Carena’s career in order to then demonstrate the
originality and singular quality of the painting in his Venetian period.
The first section is devoted to the initial, overly refined and shadowy period, tinged with
symbolism and languid sentimentality. These were the Turin years when the artist assimilated
the style of Grosso and the more congruent one of Bistolfi and Segantini. Some masterpieces
from the first decade of the twentieth century are brought together here, such as The Pearl
(1908) and the Portrait of Baroness Ferrero (1910), along with various unshown works like
Sister’s Portrait of 1901 and Violinist of 1905. There are then the two celebrated paintings The
Uprising (1904) and the monumental The Wayfarers (1908), respectively from the Accademia
di Belle Arti, Rome, and the Gallerie d’Arte Moderna, Udine, which mark the move from late-
Romantic refinement to the literary fervour of the social statement in his first years in Rome.
The second section presents the change of direction made in 1913. Carena resolved this first
stylistic turn between 1913 and 1914, looking to the French artists Derain, Gauguin and
Cézanne. He cleared away all syntheses and languor, scanned the volumes, shaped the lines
and purified the composition. His stays in the uncontaminated village of Anticoli Corrado
contributed to this new view, which the painter best expresses in pictures like Portrait of a
Priest (1913) from the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna di Ca' Pesaro, Guarfalda (1914)
and the masterpiece Girl at the Door (1919) from the Fondazione Cini. The Swineherd (c.
1914), Sack Race (1919), Still Life with Herrings (1920) and Still Life with flowers are being
shown here for the first time. The latter was one of the paintings Carena withdrew from the
1914 Biennale because Fradeletto had dared to air reservations about the new direction of his
painting.
The war, experienced at the front, accentuated his wish for expressive essentiality, to which
his personal approach to classicism, looking to the seventeenth century, is related, though in
the ambience of Plastic Values and the Novecento in the first half of the 1920s. The works of
this period may be admired in the third section, where they are well represented by the two
masterpieces Stillness (1921-26) and The Apostles (1924). Figures shaped with light emanate
a sense of tranquillity and composure, though an echo of Cezanne’s painting can also be
discerned in their weft. The splendid portraits of his daughters and his brother Don Mario
Carena show rather the change towards the works of the 1930s.
The fourth section is devoted to ‘poetic realism’, the artist’s unmistakeable code. Venice
Biennali and Rome Quadrennali crowned him as one of the main exponents of Italian painting.
At that time his naturalism took on a new accent and moved from the classical canon to an
increasingly coarse, rugged, expressive realism. This is exemplified by paintings that have
made him famous, such as School (1927-1928), which won the Carnegie Prize in Pittsburg in
1929, The Mirror (1928), from the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Genova, , The Terrace (1929),
from the Gallerie d’Arte Moderna, Udine, The Family (1929), from the Galleria Comunale d'Arte
Moderna, Rome, and Masked Figure (1932) and Bathers (1938), from the Museo Rimoldi in
Cortina. The real gem of this section is the extraordinary Deposition (known also as Pietà and
shown at the 1940 Biennale) from the Vatican Museum’s collection of modern religious art
(bought by Count Cini and then given to Paul VI), specially loaned for the Venice exhibition.
This section also has the two masterpieces People’s Theatre (1933) from the Galleria d’arte
Moderna in Milan and Man Sleeping (1938) from the Galleria Comunale, Rome. The section is
closed by Dogali (1936), the artist’s only concession to fascist rhetoric, which aroused bitter
controversy at the 1936 Biennale because the dead were tormenting and not heroic. This
painting was cut into pieces by Carena himself, though he left the magnificent central nucleus
intact, which was found only recently after careful research and has therefore never before
been shown.
In the fifth section, the tribute to Delacroix with Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (1939), from
the Gallerie d’Arte Moderna in Udine, and Tobias and the Angel (1940), is followed by some
paintings from the turn of the fourth decade, culminating in the important exhibition at the
Michelangelo gallery in Florence in 1943, the only sole exhibition held in his first adopted city
that saw his rise as a painter and as director of the Academy. Carena tends now towards full
light, foreshadowing some of the work of his subsequent Venetian period. Some of the
paintings here have never been previously shown, like Flight into Egypt (c. 1940), where warm
shades of red and yellow enhance the delicate dynamism of the group of pilgrims, The Angel
Awakening the Shepherds (1940), The Rape of the Sabine Women (1942) and The Conversion
of Saul, in which the animation is more frenzied and the colours softer and more contrasted.
The sixth section presents a series of previously unshown paintings that mark the artist’s move
to Venice. Works like Exodus (1943), Rain of Fire (1943), The Parting of the Red Sea, Bust of
Marzia (1946), Self Portrait (1947) and Bathers show the use of paint as pure chromatic
material, less and less bound by the line, while the sign becomes freer and more concise. An
increasingly dense and sinuous line and even brighter colour typify the works from the end of
the 1940s, in which the artist seems to look to Daumier, transforming his popular,
mythological or Biblical heroes into grotesque and highly dramatic figures, whether they be
Cain and Abel, Judith and Holofernes (1946-48) or a simple Shepherd (1970).
This is the line asserted in the 1950s, here presented in the seventh section, when Carena
reaches the nadir of his religious tension; the sign is now vibrant and the colour vehement and
macerated. The figure of man and of Christ on the cross draw nearer to one another. The
Christ of the last versions of the Pietà, and with him every man who recognises himself in the
carnage of Calvary, becomes the cardinal figure of the pain and abandon that were expertly
interpreted by Carena in his Venetian period. The People’s Theatre (1952) from Ca’ Pesaro, the
Pietà from the Galleria Civica in Vittorio Veneto and Anguish (1956) from the Marzotto
Collection are works of intense expressionism.
The exhibition ends with the eighth section, where the still lifes are gathered, as if in an ideal
place of purification. The spirit of the artist seems to find calm in the Venetian light. Inspired
by Tiepolo and, equally, by his contemporary Morandi, Carena fuses material and light in the
solid, highly symbolic bodies of his still lifes dominated by shells. He keeps the sumptuousness
and solemnity of the Baroque vein alive in the chromatic weave of the paint, while in
calibrating the composition he tends towards a meditated synthesis that unifies space, light
and material. It is in this context that the colours are given back the gleam of gemstones, that
recondite splendour that translates Felice Carena’s incessant and pulsating love of life into the
painting of every age.