Riccardo Marchi

Associate Professor, Art History
Stuart S. Golding Endowed Chair in Modern and Contemporary Art
PhD, University of Chicago
Phone: (813) 974-2360
Email: rmarchi@usf.edu
Office: FAH 265

Research

Riccardo Marchi’s current research and teaching interests focus on the history of the practice, theory and reception of modernist painting in the 20th century. He is presently working on a book that explores a moment of dramatic change in this history, by analyzing the paintings and theory that Umberto Boccioni, Robert Delaunay and Wassily Kandinsky presented in Berlin, and the responses that their pictures and words generated between 1912 and 1914. Publications related to this project have appeared in peer-reviewed journals, books and exhibition catalogues in the U.S., France and England, and include articles on Kandinsky and on the role of W.J.T. Mitchell’s theoretical work for art history.

Marchi’s interest in theory and methodology is long-standing, and resulted in publications on other moments and traditions of art historical thought. He has studied the key theoretical debates that took place in early 20th century German-speaking art history, by focusing on the work of two protagonists of the Vienna School. First on Hans Tietze’s 1913 “Methode der Kunstgeschichte,” in an article recently translated, with a new introduction, in the “Journal of Art Historiography.” Then on Max Dvořák’s project of art history “as a part of Geistesgeschichte” and its relationship to Expressionism, in a book that included the first Italian translation of Dvořák’s 1918 “Idealismus und Naturalismus in der gotischen Skulptur und Malerei.”

Marchi was also one of the editors of the proceedings of the international conference “Metodologia della Ricerca: Orientamenti attuali,” published in two volumes of the peer-reviewed journal “Arte Lombarda.” This conference, devoted to interdisciplinary research on art and images, was held at Università Cattolica and the Politecnico in Milan to honor the legacy of renowned art historian Eugenio Battisti, who taught at Pennsylvania State University between 1965 and 1984.

In addition to several grants from Università Cattolica, the University of Chicago, and the University of South Florida, Marchi was awarded fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago, the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University, the Whiting Foundation and the Getty Research Institute.

Teaching

Marchi’s classes at USF include a survey on 20th century art in Europe and in the U.S. and seminars related to his current research: Painting in Early 20th Century Europe,; The Purity of Painting,; Kandinsky’s Abstraction,; Modernism in Germany,; Modern and Contemporary Art: Key Interpretations, and; Modernism, Postmodernism and Beyond.

Key Publications

“Hans Tietze and Art History as a Geisteswissenschaft in Early 20th century Vienna,” Journal of Art Historiography (n° 5, December 2011). Online publication: 26,000 words.

“Kandinsky et Der Sturm,” in Kandinsky, edited by Christian Derouet (Paris, Éditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, 2009), 230-245.

“October 1912: Understanding Kandinsky’s Art ‘Indirectly’ at Der Sturm,” Getty Research Journal (1, March 2009): 53-74.

“Kandinsky, l’abstraction et le monde en 1913,” Ligeia: Dossiers sur l’art XXII (n° 89-92, January-June 2009), special issue “Art et Abstraction,” edited by Nadia Podzemskaia: 75-89.

“Learning to Look at Kandinsky in Berlin, 1913,” in Seeing Perception, edited by Silke Horstkotte and Karin Leonhard (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 216-236.

“W.J.T. Mitchell,” in Art: Key Contemporary Thinkers, edited by Diarmuid Costello and Jonathan Vickery (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2007), 82-86.

Max Dvořák, Idealismo e naturalismo nella scultura e nella pittura gotica (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2003). Contains the annotated translation of Dvořák’s 1918 Idealismus und Naturalismus in der gotischen Skulptur und Malerei and Riccardo Marchi, “Max Dvořák e la storia dell’arte come parte della Geistesgeschichte”, 107-197.

Metodologia della ricerca: Orientamenti attuali. Congresso internazionale in onore di Eugenio Battisti, 2 vols. (Milan: Istituto per la Storia dell’Arte Lombarda, 1994: special issues of the journal Arte Lombarda 105/106/107, 1993; and 110/111, 1994). Co-editor, with Maria Luisa Gatti Perer, Giosuè Bonetti and Alessandro Rovetta.