Genoa from the sea

Matteo Fochessati

Lele Luzzati’s vast and extraordinarily rich artistic output has rarely been the subject of a balanced, comprehensive analysis of the different fields of expression explored throughout his multifaceted career. While the Genoese artist’s reputation is largely associated with his work in set design and illustration, considerably less critical attention has been devoted to his remarkable production in the fields of interior design and applied arts.

In particular, the often environmental nature of his works and decorative interventions frequently offered Luzzati the opportunity to put into practice, in this area of research too, the expressive potential of his theatrical experience. Through these works, moreover, he was able to reinterpret, with considerable experimental incisiveness, the distinctive features of his own independent pictorial language, culturally shaped by a broad range of influences.

If we focus exclusively on works created within the Genoese area, Luzzati’s first contributions to decoration and ship interiors can be dated to the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In 1949, the Trieste-born architect Gustavo Pulitzer Finali, who had recently settled in Genoa, invited Luzzati to collaborate on the interior decoration of the Conte Biancamano. On this ocean liner, Luzzati made his debut in the field of ship decoration with a large panel interpreting the theme of “Romantic Choreography” through a modern reinterpretation of the iconographic models of Flemish tapestries.

During these same years, Luzzati also began his long and fruitful collaboration with Giovanni “Nino” Zoncada, who had settled in Genoa in 1948. In this way, he became part of a circle of artists whose works, complementing the design work of the Venetian-born architect, contributed to the development of the “Costa style”, which soon established itself through the interior designs of the Genoese shipping company’s principal ocean liners.

As early as 1958, for the Federico C., Luzzati created an assemblage of Italian monuments and palaces, revisiting in this decorative theme a characteristic motif of his visual culture: his uninhibited and imaginative ability to combine different styles and subjects.

Particularly noteworthy was the creation of the large Commedia dell’Arte lace panel for the first-class restaurant aboard the Oceanic, a Home Lines ocean liner for which Zoncada designed several interiors in 1965. Made using the bobbin-lace technique by the Manifattura Zennaro of Rapallo in 1964 and now held at the Lace Museum in the same town, this fairy-tale-like work brought back the characters and fantastical atmosphere of the large tapestry Favola, presented by MITA at the Exhibition of the Unique Piece, organised as part of the 10th Milan Triennale in 1954, and of the ceramic panel Banchetto di re e regine, created in 1961 for the bar of the Genoa Academy and now held in the collections of the Cassa di Risparmio di Savona.

Having created the wall decorations for the Eugenio C. (1966), Luzzati also designed the preparatory cartoon for the tapestry Flauto magico, woven by M.I.T.A. of Genoa-Nervi. Centred on the theme of the forest, a key element in the narrative structure of Mozart’s opera and also a recurring subject in Luzzati’s visual world, this tapestry, through its stylised imagery and heightened chromatic effects, reaffirmed in particular the enduring and distinctive connection between his artistic research and the compositional explorations of Klee’s abstract painting.

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