Istria on the Internet - Visual Arts - Sculptors

Proteo Hirst
Painters - Renderers - Sculptors

Proteo Hirst was born in Muggia, a few kilometres away from Trieste in 1930.

He attended the Scuola Libera di Figura, where he had Nino Perizi, a painter and sculptor from Trieste as his teacher. He was however a self-taught artist in sculpture. He gradually developed the various techniques (stone, wood carving, bronze and metal) through a long and painstaking work, also helped by an inborn extraordinary manual skill.

From humble beginnings, especially in drawing and small sculptures, he then held his first solo show at the Sala Comunale d'Arte of Trieste in 1968. Since that time, his works started to feature in several local, national and international exhibitions. He also held other five solo shows until two years from his premature death in 1985.

After that date, posthumous anthological solo shows featuring both his drawings and sculptures were held in 1991, 1194, 1997, and 1998.

His career as an artist is studded with numerous prizes and acknowledgements, amongst which mention ought to be made of the Medaglia d'Oro (Golden Medal) awarded to him by the Commissariato Generale del Governo in 1970, the Medaglia d'Oro given to him by the Region of Friuli Venezia-Giulia in 1971, the Premio Toscana Arte Turismo ('Tuscany Art Tourism' Prize) in Pisa in 1979, the Medaglia d'Oro and the consequent nomination to the Accademia Italia Arti e Lavoro in Salsomaggiore in 1979.

Curriculum

His language as a sculptor was characterised by an only apparent impressionism, actually conditioned by a deep expressionist substratum. He was able to catch the dialectical tension typical of that moment when contemporary art, leaving behind the monumental metaphysical forms of the Twentieth century art and the most exalted futuristic research, originally and autonomously identified with those artists still sincerely committed to renovating plastic expression. Many words have been used by critics to describe Hirst's personal expression. However, the original nature of his works depends on a personal interpretation of the distinctive features of some great artists of the Twentieth century. In his works, he absorbed much of the innovative strength of Adolfo Wildt, especially during Expressionism when the spiritual tension became stylistic tension.

He could feel the expressive power of Medardo Rosso, his bright and powerful impressionism, echoing a vital and poetic impulse in his sculpture aimed at defining and defining once again and for ever the space-object relationship, as also commented by Mario De Michelis in 'La Scultura del Novecento'. He was also influenced by the isolated research carried out by Roberto Melli, his plastic enhancement of the positive-full carrying the light against the negative-empty exalting shade, that is the pure value of the volumes. Coming from Trieste, on the one hand he drew inspiration from Rodin's influences on Selva and Rovan and Martini's influences on Mascherini, but he also could not help coming under the influence of the great Yugoslav teacher Mestrovic.

Trieste, 1999 Claudio H. Martelli

Exhibitions:

1968 - Sala Comunale d'Arte - personal - Trieste
1969 - Sala d'Arte Cesare Sofianopulo Trieste
1969 - Arac Trieste
1969 - Sala Comunale d'Arte Trieste
1970 - Endas Trieste
1970 - Endas Pordenone
1970 - Premio S. Giusto Trieste
1970 - Sala Comunale d'Arte Trieste
1971 - Galleria d'Arte Palazzo Doria Genova
1971 - Sala d'Arte Cesare Sofianopulo Trieste
1971 - Rassegna internazionale d'arte Muggia(TS)
1971 - Endas Pordenone
1971 - Endas - personal - Trieste
1972 - Endas Trieste
1972 - Galleria Tergeste Trieste
1972 - Galleria Mariani Ravenna
1972 - Galleria Russo - personal - Trieste
1979 - Galleria Tavolozza d'oro - personal - Trieste
1983 - Galleria "Rossoni" - personal - Trieste
1991 - Galleria Le Caveau - posthumous personal - Trieste
1994 - Azienda Soggiorno - posthumous personal - Grado
1997 - Galleria Athena - posthumous personal - Trieste
1998 - Soc. Canottieri Adria - posthumous personale - Trieste

Prizes:

1969 Arac, Trieste - II Premio Medaglia d'argento
1970 Sala d'Arte Cesare Sofianopulo, Trieste - I Premio Medaglia d'oro Commissariato del Governo
1971 Sala d'Arte Cesare Sofianopulo, Trieste - I Premio Medaglia d'oro Regione F.V.G.
1979 Pisa - Premio Toscanarte Turismo Pisa
1979 Accademia Italia Arti e Lavoro, Salsomaggiore - Nomina ad accademico d'Italia Medaglia d'oro

Bibliography:

Claudio Martelli, Artisti triestini contemporanei, Ada Trieste 1973
Flavio Puviani, Dizionario dei pittori, scultori e incisori, Casa Editrice Alba Ferrara I edizione 1974, Alba Ferrara II edizione 1975
Catalogo d'arte contemporanea, Casa Editrice Alba edizione 1976
Grande Enciclopedia dell'arte italiana contemporanea, Casa Editrice Alba edizione 1980
Claudio H. Martelli, Artisti di Trieste dell'Isontino dell'Istria e della Dalmazia, APC Trieste 1985
L'arte illustata, Accademia Italia, Salsomaggiore 1983
Claudio H. Martelli, Dizionario degli artisti di Trieste, dell'Isontino dell'Istria e della Dalmazia, Hammerle Editori in Trieste 1985

Criticisms:

A hypothesis may be put forward as for Hirst's descent: Rodin, Rovan, Hirst. A gradual vanishing of the allegorical, symbolic and historical components and a growing invasion of the everyday life. The substantial novelty manifests itself in the flexible matching of the plastic conception to the matter and technique. Hirst changes, though remaining himself, in the making of his small figurines or his statues, in his charcoals, terracottas, bronzes, chalks and wood carvings. Each material has its own voice. The light breaks up on the levels boasted with the fingers in the terracotta and in the embracing fluidity of the bronze volumes, an interpretation of the original configuration of the wooden fibres and an absolute freedom in moulding clay...

Giulio Montenero
Extract of an article from Il Piccolo, 6th October 1979

Hirst's realism is only apparently simple. Important traces of the avant-garde lesson may actually be found in it. However, he never practised the avant-garde theories as a mere apprentice or as a cold academic but he was always deeply emotionally involved in his studies. His is an overwhelming vitalism capable of catching all the drama and arbitrariness of the expressionist composition, in which the futurist memory becomes, through the experience of abstraction, the springing tension underlying the realistic depiction. Through such linear and plastic means and thanks to its light, Proteo Hirst gives us that overwhelming orgiastic vitalism we do need today to cope with the plainness and banality of our thinking and feeling, a banality resulting from our society which makes much way for comfort but little space devotes to the real and authentic joie de vivre.

Sergio Molesi
Extract of an article from Trieste Oggi, 16th November 1991

The human body, female and male, is the absolute protagonist and the main interest of Hirst's work. He was born in Trieste but his cultural background was certainly Mittel-European. In the human body or rather in the pensive, embraced or intertwined bodies, he liked to catch a sort of unending unsettled dynamism, a tragic and erotic vis, echoing the old marriage of love and death, of passionate feeling and suffering. At times this is emphasised, with the aim of underscoring the violent nature of the gesture, the pathos of the action, the emotion in the feelings. Then the figures intermingle and embrace but they seem rather to be fighting or making a superhuman or cyclopean effort.

From a critical point of view, Hirst's art was under the influence of two distinct elements: the former was the local, Mittel-European or Trieste element, and especially Ruggero Rovan, one of the protagonists of the Trieste sculpture world of the twentieth century, the creator of vigorous and plastic subjects echoing the best of Rodin's carving skills. Another artist of great influence on him was Rovan's teacher, that is Vittorio Guttner. Both of them had been students at the Academy of Munich, that is to say the school which, in the second half of the XIX century, had served as a catalyst for the different European art trends, eventually suggesting the expressionist solution.

The latter element of great influence on Hirst's art was his interest for all the great Greek sculptors and especially for their dedication to the human body, the kòuros or male body and the kòre or female body. From the 'second classicism' of Skopa, a sculptor operating in the fourth century B.C. in Greece who was famous for the passionate nature and the overwhelming dynamics of his works' masses, we are then brought forward to the intensity of Pollaiolo who, echoing during Renaissance the Hellenistic models inspired by Skopa, wanted to express the dormant energy of the body through its study and analysis. To him, in the atmospheres of the Tuscany of the fifteenth century, looked Rovan for inspiration.

Marianna Acerboni

Reprinted from:

ArteCultura - Proteos Hirst

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