|
Fabiani, Max
(b Cobdil [now Kobdilj, Western Slovenia], 1865; d Italy, 1962). Slovene architect. He studied at Otto Wagner’s Spezialschule in the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna, in the late 1880s and was soon marked out for a promising career in Vienna. He designed the opulent Rococo Revival-style Artaria house (1900) in the Kohlmarkt in Vienna, and he was commissioned to construct the headquarters of the Portois & Fix interior design company (1899), also in Vienna. This Jugendstil design was remarkably simple, with a plain façade of encaustic green tiles on which the company’s trademark was picked out. Fabiani seems, however, to have been more than willing to turn his back on Jugendstil Modernism. He developed a fine Baroque Revival style, exemplified by the picturesque Urania headquarters and observatory (1905–9) on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, which reflected the tastes of the more conservative elements of the Habsburg court. Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863–1914), heir to the throne and a man of unyielding and reactionary taste, was particularly impressed by Fabiani’s work in this style, which suited his aim to re-create the late Baroque splendour of Maria Theresa’s reign (reg 1745–80). Fabiani was commissioned to restore and extend the archducal castle at Konopiste in Bohemia (1910–12). It was also through imperial patronage that he became the principal architect employed by the Slovene authorities in Ljubljana after the earthquake of 1895.
|
|
There are more than 45,000 articles in The Grove Dictionary of Art.
To access the rest of this article, including the bibliography, subscribe to
www.groveart.com.
To find out more about this subject, click on a related article below and
subscribe to www.groveart.com
|
