Drawing upon the lesser-known areas of its rich collection the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, in collaboration with the Fondazione Coronini Cronberg of Gorizia and the Soprintendenza of Trieste, aimed to substantiate a project that investigates the special attraction of the city of Florence for many artists from Venice and the Friuli Venezia Giulia region in the early decades of the twentieth century, when the Tuscan capital in many respects represented the most complete, and not only literary and figurative, synthesis of Italian culture. It shows Florence’s central role even with respect to the revival of engraving in Italy at the beginning of the last century, the so-called art of “Black and White”, which received new impetus at that time thanks to many of these artists. Lured by the fascination of the city’s glorious past of art, they contributed to the astonishing vitality of a particularly productive period in engraving: we need only mention the School of Engraving at the Academy of Fine Arts, directed by Carlo Raffaelli and then Celestino Celestini who in 1912 established official courses, initially in Italy, picking up the legacy of Fattori, or the Prima Esposizione Internazionale di Bianco e Nero (1914), and the Seconda Esposizione Internazionale dell’Incisione Moderna (1927); all these experiences made Florence, for a period of time, the authentic capital of engraving in Italy.

The city experienced the exciting growth of the historical journals of the start of the century by welcoming a group of intellectuals from the northern regions of the country that were still under Austrian rule, who converged there following the call of a common “Italian” culture. The most recognized names among the scholars, Saba, Slataper, Stuparich and Michelstaedter, found their counterparts in the young fellow artists who pursued their search for cultural identity, finding, in some cases, a new chosen homeland. The most emblematic was Giannino Marchig but we should also remember Rietti, Croatto and Sbisà, not to mention Disertori and Cainelli from Trentino, as well as Bianchi Barriviera and Balsamo Stella from the Veneto.

Most of them spent the formative years of their training in Florence, with the consequence that many of their works were acquired directly in their time, while others are the result of much more recent acquisitions. The historicalization of this artistic adventure, which occurred at least one century ago, once again confirms the critical role of the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, whose collection is famous worldwide for ancient history and the continuity of its developments, primarily concerning the art of the Renaissance, but much less so for its twentieth-century materials.

The works on paper on view reveal how these artists were remarkably able to synthesize, within the confined dimensions of the plate or sheet, the themes of the portrait, figure or landscape. All of them, albeit in their own way, found the special value of the “secret”, slow nature and thoughtful patience required for the practice of engraving to be an instrument well suited to express their personal “sense of time”, for many still under the influence of symbolist poetics.