Alfonso Iannelli
Female nude
Limed pine, circa 1920s
H: 22, W: 6, D: 3 1/2 (inches)

By Alan G. Artner
Tribune art critic

Two shows make up the summer offering at ArchiTech, Chicago’s only gallery of architectural art.

The larger is devoted to the modern interior, the smaller to presentation drawings.

The highlight of "Designed for Living: The Modern Interior" is a wood sculpture of a female nude created by Alfonso Iannelli, probably in the mid-1920s. During his early travels in Europe, Iannelli met John Storrs in Paris and Oskar Schlemmer in Berlin. The sculpture is reminiscent of both, and a remarkable piece in Iannelli’s development. From the selection of drawings on view, Iannelli deserves to be thought of as one of Chicago’s Renaissance men of the 20th Century. An upcoming monograph by gallery owner David Jameson should make that clear.

Iannelli also figures prominently in "Presentation Renderings," which spans nearly the whole of the last century, including work by Harry Viehman, Henry Glass, Bertrand Goldberg and the firm of Daniel H. Burnham. Here the centerpiece is Iannelli’s design for the tomb of Louis Sullivan, a 1925 piece in tempera and metallic ink that proves austere and lavish at once. It, like most of the renderings on show, was never built. So the building survives only in the present form, as a fantasy tribute. On a more spectacular scale is Iannelli’s proposed exhibition building for Goodyear Pavilion at the 1933 World’s Fair.

[Published July 8, 2005]