Silvio Giulio Rotta (

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

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1853- Venice, 1913) was an Italian painter. While his first canvases were light watercolors of

genre Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other fo ...

subjects in his native city, that is, the daily life of Venetians; his later career focused on realistic depictions of the darker side of human nature, including the interior of insane asylums.

Biography

His father was the painter

Antonio Rotta Antonio Rotta (28 February 1828 – 10/11 September 1903) was an Italian painter, mainly of genre subjects. Biography Rotta was born on 28 February 1828 in Gorizia in the Kingdom of Illyria, which was part of the Austrian Empire. He enrolled ...

(born 1828 in

Gorizia Gorizia (; ; , ; ; ) is a town and (municipality) in northeastern Italy, in the autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. It is located at the foot of the Julian Alps, bordering Slovenia. It is the capital of the Province of Gorizia, Region ...

), who had studied at the

Accademia di Belle Arti This is a list of the tertiary-level schools or academies of fine art in Italy that are recognised by the Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca, the Italian ministry of higher education. Accademie di Belle Arti The of ...

, and worked as genre painter. One of his Silvio's works, ''Head of a Veteran'', was a watercolor portrait completed at the age of thirteen. At the

Exposition Universelle (1878) The 1878 Universal Exposition (, ), also known as the 1878 Paris Exposition, 1878 World Fair, or 1878 World Expo, was a world's fair held in Paris, French Third Republic, France, from 1 May to 10 November 1878, to celebrate the recovery of Franc ...

in Paris, he was awarded a gold medal for his painting of ''Costumi popolari veneziani''. Among his other works at the exhibition were ''Raccolte della Cipolle a Sottomarina'' and ''Sulla Spiaggia del Lido''. After 1887, likely after a personal illness, his thematic became melancholic, even lugubrious. Another review merely describes the painter as having a ''Melancholic spirit and a mind tormented by artistic visions not always serene'' induced to depict subjects ''of a sorrowful and painful character''. Examples of this change are the painting ''I forzati'' (prison laborers filing two by two from open-air fieldwork back to the confines of jail), which was displayed at the International Expostion of Venice, and receiving a golden medal at the Fine Arts Exposition in Budapest; also ''Abbandoned Walls'' and in ''In the shadows'' (''Nelle tenebre''). In 1895, at the first Biennale of Venice, the painting ''Nosocomio'' (Asylum) won an award. The realist painting in earth tones depicts the inmates of a mental asylum, in a wintry courtyard during recreation, sporting in a disarray of positions or actions. A dark priest and a confessor appear to be the only purposeful humans in the painting. The canvas was re-exhibited in 1900 in Paris. This is a topic that had been addressed by painters such as Signorini. Meanwhile, the worsening of Rotta's illness, diminished his output. In 1912, he displayed his last major work, ''Nelle tenebre''. La Pittura Veneziana, Fratelli Alinari Ed., page 137.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rotta, Silvio Giulio 1853 births 1913 deaths 19th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 20th-century Italian painters Italian genre painters Painters from Venice 19th-century Italian male artists 20th-century Italian male artists