Ship portraits, opere raccolte da Carlo Sciarrelli

Friday 10th november at 11 am was inaugurated at Leonor Fini Hall of Warehouse 26, in the Old Port area, the exhibition “Ship Portraits, works collected by Carlo Sciarrelli”. The exhibition is organized by Triestina della Vela with the co-organization of the Municipality of Triest, Department of culture and Tourism, for the centenary of the Yacht Club, founded on 20th march 1923. Triestina della Vela President Marina Simoni and Trieste City Councilor Giorgio Rossi cut the ribbon. For the first time, a considerable part of Carlo Sciarrelli's collected picture gallery dedicated to marine painting, some period technical measuring instruments and the half wooden hulls, which from nautical design artifacts became art objects, are presented in a single exhibition. Everything in this exhibition speaks of perfectly shaped boats designed to sail all the seas of the world. Sciarrelli's collection of ship portraits, the result of a long, passionate and cultured research, gives us an original look at figurative painting dedicated to the reproduction of boats, through a range of works by the most interesting Italian, European and international authors. Collections of this kind are rare in Italy and also in the world. Among the Italians we find some of the leading marine painters, primarily the Genoese Domenico Gavarrone, Angelo Arpe from Bonassola, of whose life little or nothing is known, the Neapolitan Michele Funno, and the Leghorn brothers Michele and Luigi Renault. Moving on to Europe we find Mathieu-Antoine Roux, the French watercolorist and member of what can be considered with good reason as the quintessential Marseille dynasty of marine painters and hydrographers. Nicolas Cammillieri whose artistic career began in Marseilles but came to fruition in Paris. Among the English mariners is Thomas Buttersworth, a seaman who devoted himself primarily to scenes of naval battles, which he also sketches in watercolor on makeshift media such as sheets of signal and muster books. The success of these sketches contributed so much to his fame that he was appointed naval painter for the East India Company. In the wake of the development of shipping routes and trade, which systematically linked the two land hemispheres in the modern age, marine painting also spread widely and touched all the major ports of the world. We find the Australian Reginald Arthur Borstel, the son of a sea captain and a seaman himself, refining his art by exhibiting his work aboard ships or in photographic studios. Surprising then it’s the technique of Thomas Willis, who was born in Connecticut and moved to New York where he was employed in the manufacture and sale of silk thread, who in a completely unique way chooses to portray ships using plush velvet for the hulls and silk for the sails. Finally, there are several paintings made by Chinese painters with their immediately recognizable style, but without signatures or indications to facilitate their exact identification. A special section is devoted to nineteenth-century seamen from Trieste, whose paintings testify Trieste's commercial vitality and its unbreakable connection with the sea. Paolo Klodic, the prolific ship portraitist; the watercolors on paper of Giuseppe Kraus; the works of Felice Polli, master boat builder; and Basi Ivancovich, the captain who in the second half of the 19th century became one of Trieste's leading marine painters. We are dealing with a niche painting unknown to the general public, precisely for this reason the exhibition will be an opportunity to make its artistic value known, as well as to remember the figure of Carlo Sciarrelli who so tenaciously wanted and created this collection. Carlo Sciarrelli (Trieste, 1934 - 2006) was a naval designer from whose pen came more than 500 yachts, including replicas and series, of rare beauty. In March 2003 he received an honorary degree in architecture from the Iuav University of Venice. In the same year, the City of Trieste awarded him the Civica Benemerenza for his work as a designer, and in 2007, after his death, was dedicated an exhibition to him in the old Sea Museum building. He has been called the architect of the sea, perpetually seeking the perfect marriage of beauty and functionality. This exhibition takes us back to his working environment and the world of his passions. The exhibition can be visited until 10 December from Thursday to Sunday from 10 am to 17 pm. Reservations and information for guided group tours: Secretariat Triestina della Vela. info@stv.ts.it - ph.040 306327