Ernesto Basile - Ordinamenti e codici dei registri della modernità

Ernesto Basile (Palermo 1857 - 1932), after a short assistantship (which started in 1882) at the University chair held by Enrico Guj in Rome, became a professor and later (in 1891) an academic of Technical Architecture first at Rome University (until 1890) and then at Palermo University (basically until his death on August 26, 1932). He began his university career as an assistant of his father, Giovan Battista Filippo Basile (Palermo 1825-1891) holder of the chair of Technical Architecture of Palermo. A genuine interpreter, in the last two decades of the 19th century, of a problematic eclecticism, well anchored to a leading Sicilian tradition in search of "new architectural systems" (that he had inherited from his father), Ernesto Basile had been considerably motivated, since his debut, by innovative methodological aspirations and a will to meet the most advanced international cultures. An example is offered by the Roman projects of the 1880s and, the following decade, by Sicilian production (worthy of note, the Ossario di Calatafimi, the fabric complex for the IV National Exposition in Palermo, Villa Bordonaro, Palazzo Francavilla, for its interiors deco¬rations and the furnishings above all, and the kiosks Ribaudo and Vicari in Piazza Verdi). Of interest, also, are his dissertations on coeval architectural planning, such as Il Concorso per il Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele in Torino (1879), Sulla costruzione dei teatri: Le dimensioni e l'ordinamento dei palchi in rispondenza al costume italiano (1883), Sui mezzi atti a garantire la sicurez¬za dei teatri in caso d'incendio (1889), and Il Palazzo del Parlamento di Berlino. Notizie storiche, artistiche e tecniche (1889). Among his several memoirs of the bids projects he worked on, he published an article entitled Per il mio progetto del palazzo di Giustizia e per l'Arte (1884) as an answer to the observations on the style he had adopted. Lastly, his essay on Giacomo Serpotta (1656-1732) (in R. Lentini, Le sculture e gli stucchi di Giacomo Serpotta, Torino 1911) is remarkable, and one of the first critical and historical revaluations of Sicilian Baroque art, in the style of writings by Gioacchino Di Marzo and Vincenzo Pitini. Defined by the contemporary critics as the pioneer of the national artistic and architectural "renewal" of the years of Belle Époque, Basile achieved his international popularity in the period been 1899 and 1918, principally for some buildings in Palermo, most of them with a definition of the interior spaces (entirely or affecting only the principal guest rooms) , such as the Palazzina Paternò, the Villino Florio, the Grand Hòtel villa Igiea, the second Utveggio residence, the complex of pavilions for the First Agricultural Exposition, his house in Via Syracuse, the Villino Fassini, the Villa Deliella, the seat of Cassa di Risparmio, the Kursaal Biondo, the second kiosk Ribaudo, (and a remarkable number of aristocratic chapels) and with such Roman works as the Palazzina Vanoni, the villa of the marquis of Rudinì, the palace of the Chamber of Deputies in Montecitorio, and the Gran Caffè Faraglia (Roma). He successfully participated in the modern international arts and decorations expositions, taking place in Turin (1902) and in Venice (in 1903, 1905 and 1909), as well as the one in Milan (1906), which confirmed his commitment and inventiveness in both the application of the modernist principle of integral architectural planning (applied to several sectors of applied arts, though with a notable prevalence in the furnishing field, the latter leading, beginning in 1899, to the successful association, lasting for little more than a decade, with the renown Palermo furniture factory Golia-Ducrot), and in the aesthetic ideal of the equality of the arts, in whose name he organized an interdisciplinary circle. This involved some of Palermo's best artists in the realization of some of the most meaningful Italian expressions of the "total work of art" (his most assiduous co-workers were the sculptors Antonio Ugo and Gaetano Geraci and the painters Ettore De Maria Bergler, Giuseppe Enea, Rocco Lentini, Luigi Di Giovanni, Michele Cortegiani and Salvatore Gregorietti). The English, German, Austrian and, of course, Italian reviews of the epoch bear testimony to the attention given to his architectural production (and to his singular Sicilian conjugation of the principle of Gesamtkunstwerk) acknowledging, thus, his leading role (in Italy) in the modernity of language and his sensitivity to the new aesthetic taste that replaced 19th century eclecticism. Concerning this, he was one of the most problematic Italian figures in the transition phase towards the new "artistic sensibility." Though older than the other protagonists of the Liberty style, he acted with academic authoritativeness with a view to promoting the renewal movement in Italy, and supported the phenomenon in its premature expressions (among the fewest in Europe) by giving birth to a school of the "modern architectural project" (whose best disciples and assistants, besides some qualified protagonists of late Sicilian modernism (see, Ernesto Armò, Francesco Fichera, Saverio Fragapane, Salvatore Benfratel¬lo, Giovan Battista Santangelo, Enrico Calandra, Francesco La Grassa, Salvatore Caronia Roberti, and Giuseppe Samonà). Soon brought back to a mannered current, the school ended up, in the1920s, isolating most of its members from the new international orientations of the architectural culture.