Roger Fry and Italian art

Uittreksel

A revelatory examination of Roger Fry's fascinating but relatively little-known writings on his first love, Italian art. Drawing on articles, lectures and a wealth of new documentary materials letters, diaries and notebooks it shows how fresh and readable his writings are, and how pioneering his approach remains. Roger Fry (1866-1934) is best known as a champion of Post-Impressionism and a pioneer of Modernist art criticism. But his first love was early Italian painting, on which he became a recognized authority, publishing a monograph on Giovanni Bellini in 1899. Even after the Post-Impressionist exhibitions in 1910 and 1912 and the foundation of the Omega Workshops, Fry continued to write and lecture on Italian art right up until his death. He looked at modernism through Quattrocento eyes rather than the other way around, as is often wrongly assumed. It is impossible not to be struck by how fresh and immediately readable his writings are, how pioneering in some ways his approach remains. His work on Italian art modifies the received view of him as a pure formalist. Apart from a famous article on Giotto which Fry republished in 'Vision and Design' (1920), the writings on Italian art are relatively little known, and a selection of the best of them is republished here, thus introducing an important aspect of Fry's many-sided work to a new audience.