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Details
- Date
- 1932-1933
- Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- photo collage on card
- Dimensions
- 17.9 x 9.3 cm
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased with funds provided by the Photography Collection Benefactors' Program 2011
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 174.2011
- Artist information
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Adele Gloria
Works in the collection
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About
Adele Gloria’s extraordinary career as an artist was preconditioned by her background as a young woman from Sicily. Defiantly outspoken and ambitious, Gloria quickly became entangled with the avant-garde circles in her hometown of Catania, leading to a close acquaintance with the leader of the Italian futurist movement F. T. Marinetti. In line with many women artists of the time, Gloria sought to break away from parochial notions of femininity by working in a multitude of modes – poetry, painting, dance, sculpture, fashion design, journalism and photography.
The photo collages which Gloria created during the 1930s are particularly interesting for the intense focus the artist places on her own persona, diverging significantly from the futurist emphasis of technological progress. Modernity, in Gloria’s self portraits is not sanctified for its own sake, but is validated for the opportunities it created for a woman to unravel and express her multifaceted individuality.
Photo collage was a highly favoured method in futurist circles as it embraced the technical possibilities of the medium, while at the same time destroying the stasis of frozen time, which was ‘the antithesis of what Futurist art wanted to be.”1 Gloria’s ‘Composition’ 1932-33, achieves a sense of dynamism by a seemingly random juxtaposition of photographic fragments of herself. The clash of scale, form and contexts produces an effect that is more akin to a cinematic montage or experimental music. It is compounded by the intentionally slapdash method of application, which makes the presence of the artist so tangible.
1. Lista, G. ‘Futurism and photography’, Merrell publishers, London, 2001 p 10
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Exhibition history
Shown in 4 exhibitions
I futuristi e la fotografica: creazione fotografica e immagine quotidiana, Galleria Civica, , 07 Dec 1985–26 Jan 1986
I futuristi e la fotografica: creazione fotografica e immagine quotidiana, Galleria Museo Depero, , 14 Feb 1986–16 Mar 1986
Futurism: vintage photographs, drawings and books, Galerie Priska Pasquer, Köln, 25 Apr 2003–31 Jul 2003
What's in a face? aspects of portrait photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 24 Sep 2011–05 Feb 2012
Modernists: selections from the European collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 07 Nov 2015–25 Apr 2016
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Bibliography
Referenced in 1 publication
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Giovanni Lista, I futuristi e la fotografia: creazione fotografica e immagine quotidana, Modena, 1985, 57 (illus.). fig.132
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