ANTO-CARTE Antonio
RAILWAY STATION MODEL; MODEL FOR THE STAINED GLASS WINDOW AT THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION IN BRUSSELS IN 1935
Gouache and watercolour on board: 45 x 125 cm / 17.7 x 49.2 ins
Painter of religious subjects, portraits, genre scenes, still lifes, theater sets and ballet sets; painter of gouaches, draughtsman, lithographer, watercolourist and illustrator. Expressionism, Symbolism and Mysticism. Antonio Anto-Carte attended the Academy in Mons and was a pupil of Constant Montald, Emile Fabry and Jean Delville at the Academy in Brussels. He went to Paris to continue his training and studied fresco technique in Italy.
He also travelled to Morocco.
He befriended Gustave Van de Woestyne and Valerius De Saedeleer and together they exhibited as the ‘Imagiers Belges’. He admired Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Maurice Denis, creating a dreamlike psychological climate with symbolist tendencies in his paintings. He later succeeded Montald at the Academy in Brussels and was elected a member of the Belgian Académie Royale. He participated in the Exposition Universelle in Brussels in 1910 and was awarded a gold medal in Barcelona in 1929.
Anto-Carte exhibited this particular painting at the International Exhibition of 1935. It was also exhibited in 1995 at the Anto-Carte Retrospective Exhibition in Mons and in 1996 at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris. The art work represents the various means of transportation, power and speed. The names of countries or cities spell out various destinations and there also appear certain elements of landscapes or cultures: Congolese statues, a country-woman, a metal-worker, a high tower, orthodox and muslim buildings, characters and ancient columns and other buildings also evoking other countries. Boats, planes and trains are the symbols of travel, also personified by two swimmers carrying a torch and a woman gliding in a plane-shaped light and carrying a horn. These characters lead to the central group of Mercure with the caduceus leaves.
This painting has been exhibited at the exhibition “Train, Zug, Treno, Tren” at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland (June 6, 2022 till September 25, 2022).
Period:
Mons 1886 - Ixelles (Brussels) 1954
Belgian School
Exhibitions:
Bern - Brussels - Charleroi - Ixelles (Brussels) - Liège - Louvain - Mexico - Mons - Orval - Paris
Literature:
Catalogue "Anto-Carto; Rétrospective (1886-1954)"; Mons 1995 - Paris 1996, p. 135-137.
P. Piron, "Dictionnaire des Artistes plasticiens de Belgique", Vol. 1, Brussels 2003, p.193.
E. Bénézit, "Dictionary of Artists", Paris 2006, Vol. 3, p. 491.