Trevisanello and the stories of his workshop
VENICE – Among his clients were Renato Guttuso, Pablo Picasso, Emilio Vedova, Giuseppe Santomaso, Osvaldo Licini, Armando Pizzinato and many others of that caliber. They passed through the workshop in Fondamenta Bragadin in San Vio, a Venetian area favored by artists, and ordered frames for their canvases. Giorgione’s Tempest, exhibited in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, also passed through his hands (“Ma desso i gà cambà cornise”, he points out). Aldo Trevisanello, close to 90, it is an institution. Every day she is still in his place in the shop, with her children Filippo and Silvia. For decades his workshop has been a meeting point for the artists who went to him for four ciacole and also to find out what the other painters are working on. All friends, but rivals. Art is also business. In the period between the fifties and eighties in Venice the artistic ferment had reached its peak. The Biennale, the Academy of Fine Arts, Peggy Guggenheim, the great museums, the private galleries, exerted a strong attraction and the city was a magical source of inspiration. These are the years of the great success of the Burano Prize for painting that impose themselves on a national scale. «It was another world – Trevisanello said shortly – it was not a Venice invaded by hit-and-run tourism. There were less quality visitors, but of higher quality. When I opened my shop in 1960 the city was full of Venetians, now I always miss them. I didn’t think of being a framer, I had a passion for music, I played and sang in a band, as they used to say in those days, with some success: the pianist was Marco Novati’s son. Back in Merano for two months, where we had been hired for the season, it was my friend Gianni Demarco, the founder of Il Traghetto gallery, who pushed me down this path. He told me that in San Vio a carboner shop had become available and he suggested that I open a frame workshop, because there was a lot of demand. I had already worked as a craftsman in a wood workshop. I will never stop thanking Demarco for the advice he gave me. He changed my life ».
I HAVE BEAUTIFUL TIMES
And that of Aldo was a life that intersected with that of the artists and men of culture who gravitated to Venice. “I was surrounded by great characters that a little at a time I started to know and also to frequent”. He leaves the shop and goes to Fondamenta Marcantonio Bragadin, starting to list the former neighbors. It is a sort of Spoon River of culture: “Many painters lived here, from Antonio Fulgenzi to Emilio Vedova, from Mario Carraro to Sara Campesan, from Carlo Della Zorza to Giuseppe Turcato, one of the protagonists of Goldoni’s Beffa, and then again the professor Vittorio Strada, professor Giannantonio Paladini, the great architects such as Piero Pinto and Elena Guaccero, the archaeologist Giulia Fogolari, and in more recent years Giuseppe Modenese, the pioneer of Italian fashion, and the master Fabrizio Plessi and many others “. Without forgetting that it is enough to cross a bridge to find yourself in front of Palazzo Cini, where Senator Vittorio lived and now his descendants live. The concentration of illustrious personalities was such that it attracted others for meetings, walks or lunches in the trattorias in the area. For example, the poet Ezra Pound or Iosif Brodskij, the author of Fondamenta degli incurabili. Thus Trevisanello, from his privileged observatory of him, over the years has been a witness and keeper of anecdotes and amorous secrets. He can tell something without revealing too many details: «Alfonso Gatto, the poet, was for a period a character attracted to the wife of a famous Venetian. He knew that the lady passed by every day in Fondamenta Bragadin, he came to me with some excuse and waited for her to have the opportunity to exchange a few words. Alberto Moravia was often eating at the Cantinon, next door, almost always in good company ».
MONSIEUR LE PRESIDENT
The most illustrious personage, a frequent presence in Fondamenta Bragadin, was François Mitterrand. The French president, unrepentant tombeur de femmes, was at home in Venice, always a guest of his friend Zoran Music, the Slovenian painter who lived a few tens of meters from the Trevisanello workshop. «The president was incognito in Venice, but in a manner of speaking because four escort men wandering around the streets and waiting for him. He was a very good friend of Music and I would also say of his wife, Ida Barbarigo Cadorin, the daughter of Guido, the painter. He went almost every day to Giudecca where, I believe, he had some gallant encounters. On his way he passed my shop and greeted me with a nod and a half smile. A couple of times he came, but he never ordered me frames ».
THE ARTISTS
Chatting with Trevisanello means immersing yourself in the Venetian Bella Epoque of the second half of the twentieth century. With his work he got to know many artists and characters. It is enough to name a definition. Pizzinato? “Strong and generous.” Licata? «A close friend. In Paris we shared a bed for two months in his small house ». Licini? “The biggest”. Plexuses? “Very good”. Widow? Here the conversation becomes serious: «he was unpleasant. He was struggling to pay. His wife told me it had to be an honor to make the frames for him. ” Speaking of money, are you okay with frames? «He You live, as artisans. Today they are no longer in fashion, young people do not want paintings on the walls. Once there was so much more work. Make me pay well. I remember they asked me for three frames for the Picasso exhibition at Palazzo Grassi. The bill was quite high and I was scrupulous, but the management of the building told me not to worry. So much the lawyer paid. Understood as Gianni Agnelli ». Trevisanello starts walking again. Every four steps a greeting, he knows all the natives, actually few by now. It’s time for the Biennale. Will he go to see her? «I don’t think so, now it’s all lights and electronic installations. Not ghe if more horns ».