MUNICIPAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART

GALLERIA D'ARTE MODERNA DI ROMA CAPITALE

Via Francesco Crispi 24

Ex-MONASTERY OF S. GIUSEPPE A CAPO LE CASE (St. Joseph where the houses end) so-called because until 1870 the city of Rome ended here

The gallery was inaugurated in January 1995 with the works of the municipal collection dating from 1883 to 1945

The collection of works began in 1883 with the purchase by the City of Rome of some works of historical subject at the International Exhibition, and the first exhibition of the collection, which was enriched in the meantime by other paintings, was in 1925 in Palazzo Caffarelli on Capitoline Hill with the name GALLERIA MUSSOLINI

The gallery now hosts more than three thousand works by important artists mostly Italians of the nineteenth and twentieth century: about 2,200 sculptures and paintings as well as about 1,000 drawings and watercolors

The gallery reopened in November 2011 after a restoration of eight years and it will alternate every six months about 140 masterpieces at a time according to thematic exhibitions

On this occasion the name of the museum has been changed from GALLERIA COMUNALE D'ARTE MODERNA (Municipal Gallery of Modern Art) in the current one

The following description is that of the first exhibition called PLACES, FIGURES, STILL LIFE

PORTICO ON THE GROUND FLOOR - SCULPTURES

"Cleopatra" 1882 by the Florentine Girolamo Masini (1840/85) who also designed the statue of Cola di Rienzo on the ramp of the Capitoline Hill

"The empty rhetoric of many examples of the period is transformed by the Tuscan artist in 'naturally serene' forms, where the iconography of the heroine who commits suicide, known and appreciated at the time for a Roman copy in the Vatican Museums, is changed into that of an Eastern queen richly dressed, the image of voluptuous beauty, sitting with a elegant contrast on a crouching lion of gray marble. Vaguely reminiscent of Caravaggio, and another proof of academic exercise, is the basket of fruit at the bottom" (Maria Catalano)

Bronze group "The Azzariti twins" 1913, which could be unsettling to the ones who got a thrill out of the movie The Shining, and marble group of "Lovers" 1909/13 of the Genoese Giovanni Prini (1877/1958) who moved to Rome in 1900

"These are the years of the Roman Secession in which the artistic environment is pervaded by a strong desire for renewal, but even one of the liveliest supporters like Giovanni Prini reduces the linear tension and the desire of abstraction typical of the times towards an intimate description - in The Azzariti Twins - or visual suggestion of the best known examples of Rodin and Klimt in Lovers. Here the ratio of finished and unfinished, enhanced by the whiteness of marble, becomes a quote locked in an upward trend where volumetric solidity and simplification of form remain" (Maria Catalano)

Red Verona marble "Small Horse" 1927 by Arturo Dazzi (1881/1966)

Terracotta "The Shepherd" 1930 by Arturo Martini (1889/1947). Its drama and the posture of the legs seem to follow on Michelangelo's unfinished Pietà Rondanini

"Distancing from a commemorative sculpture, he concentrated in the years immediately preceding his success as a public sculptor on the exhibition statue 'reinventing' it: The Shepherd is a timeless figure, with an original narrative content, the result of an extraordinary creative imagination. Isolated plastic in its essence, is barely touched by the sentiment that translates into ritual composure and compositional rigor. A quick and unconventional technique, reminiscent of his Munich period and in touch with the Jugendstil (Art Nouveau), is used in the work (...), creating an absolute masterpiece of sculpture of the twentieth century" (Maria Catalano)

Bronzes:

"Galatea (fountain)" 1925 by Amleto Cataldi (1882/1930)

"Since 1910 his works were affected by the Art Nouveau style in the poses of elongated figures, whose bodies, however, comply with the classical proportions. (...) The sculptures of maturity show a more solid plastic, while tending to the stylization of forms" (Stefania Gagliardini)

"Languor" 1939 by Tommaso Bertolino (1866/1978)

"The Sower" 1937 by Ercole Drei (1886/1973)

"Romulus" 1937/38 by Italo Griselli (1880/1958)

"Prometheus Unbound" 1935 and "Venus with three Cupids" 1939 by Guido Galletti (1893/1977)

"Fisherman of eel" 1934 by Dino (Aldo) Basaldella (1909/77)

"Boy diving" 1930 by Lorenzo Lorenzetti

"Rest" 1939 by Attilio Torresini (1884/1961)

"Mother" 1939 by Carlo Rivalta (1887/1941) son of Augusto Rivalta the sculptor of Strenght the first marble group on the left in the Vittoriano (Victor Emmanuel Monument)

"Girl on a chair" 1955 by Giacomo Manzù (1908/91)

"Investigating the everyday woman with an image of intense humanity, the artist does not give up on a clear plastic vision and translates that majesty of the form - a stranger to Marini - for which he will be famous after the war. The attention to surfaces, that makes the bronze light-sensitive and contributes to the emotional relationship with the viewer, takes back to the late nineteenth century sculpture by Rodin and Maillol in a path away from the avant-garde and beyond the official rhetoric" (Maria Catalano)

FIRST FLOOR - MULTIPLE ASPECTS OF THE FIGURE

ROOM 1

Pottery and clay sculpture "Portrait of Anna Gemito" 1886 by Vincenzo Gemito (1852/1929) model and wife of the sculptor. A poignant portrait rich in beauty and sweetness

"The emotional involvement of the artist makes the expressive immediacy of clay exceed the nature of sketch to become a classic image of memory, free from academic ties, where the beauty of the young woman (...) is enhanced by the goodness of a modeling supported by educated cultural references. Gemito, isolated artist, outside of movements and currents, can thus recover the vitality of the classical message that accompanies his work as an undercurrent" (Maria Catalano)

"At the source (the nymph in the woods)" 1895/97 by Nino Costa (1826/1903), accompanied by two "Studies" on paper. It undoubtedly inspired Giulio Aristide Sartorio in his Gorgon and the Heroes

"Its long painting process, begun in 1863 in the forest of Fontainebleau and taken up again in Rome between 1895 and 1897, confirms the variety of influences that led the artist from an initial naturalism, substantiated from his French experience, to being closer to the research of the British Pre-Raphaelite painters" (Maria Elisa Tittoni)

"Frigidarium" 1882 by Alessandro Pigna (1862/1919) in perfect Pompeian style clearly influenced by Laurens Alma-Tadema

"Naked woman with roses" 1910 by Adolfo De Carolis (1874/1928)

"Angel with chrysanthemums" 1921 by Giuseppe Carosi (1883/1965) fully inserted into the stream of European Symbolism

"The Sultana" 1913 by Camillo Innocenti (1871/1961) almost a front counterpart, updated to the early twentieth century, of the astonishing Nude from behind by Pierre Subleyras in the National Gallery of Ancient Art in Palazzo Barberini, which was also exposed to the public again in 2011

"The Sultana of Camillo Innocenti, active protagonist of the various editions of the Roman Secession's exhibitions, is defined as the complete expression of the pointillist technique developed by the artist that substantiates, in the refined game of color and light, the opulent exotic erotic alcove and enhances the provocative nude" (Maria Elisa Tittoni)

"Violette" 1913 by Enrico Lionne (1865/1921) extremely elegant Divisionism (Pointillism)

"The elegant color contrasts between the rich and vibrant dress in the foreground and the dark chords immediately behind bring out in the painting the intensity of expression of the face highlighted by the pose of the hands" (Maria Elisa Tittoni)

"In the park" 1919 by Amedeo Bocchi (1883/1976) inspired by German expressionism with its bright color contrasts

"Beginning in 1915 Amedeo Bocchi moved to Villa Strohl-Fern in Rome where he met with the artists of the Roman Secession who stimulated him to greater reflection on luminism" (Stefania Gagliardini)

"Serenity" 1925 by Felice Carena (1879/1966)

"One of the most important examples of steadfast commitment to a practice of painting inspired and supported by the masterpieces of the great protagonists of the Italian Renaissance, in line with what was elaborated by the magazine 'Plastic Values ' by Mario Broglio. Serenity is (...) indebted to the lessons of Venetian painting of the sixteenth century and, however, it seems to have some details to be compared both with the experience of Manet's Déjeuner su l'herbe and of Cézanne's Bathers" (Maria Elisa Tittoni)

ROOM 2

"Battle of Gladiators" 1933/34 by Giorgio De Chirico (1888/1978)

"De Chirico, as well as using repertoires of ancient statuary published in the late nineteenth century by Salomon Reinach and the corpus of Renaissance drawings, also considered copies of the Battle of Cascina of Michelangelo. In a neutral background without precise connotations, the gladiators face each other in a struggle without violence, in which the poses of each character respond to a compositional logic unrealistic and dreamy, thickened by classical reminiscences freely expressed in a personal intellectual game" (Maria Elisa Tittoni)

"Siao Tai Tai" 1924 by Primo Conti (1900/88) versatile Florentine artist who was also musician, writer, art director and screenwriter

"Susanna" 1929 by Felice Casorati (1883/1963)

"At the beginning of the twenties he solidifies the form with static and melancholy subjects placed in geometric balanced spaces. (...) In 1926 he gets involved with the Novecento group showing an orientation influenced by the art of the fifteen hundreds" (Stefania Gagliardini)

"Woman making herself up" 1930 by Antonio Donghi (1897/1963) example of Magical Realism capable of vital expression even in such a bright light and in the cage determined by the light colors and the dreamlike atmosphere

"Young men at the seaside" 1934 by Franco Gentilini (1909/81)

"Scenes of Roman life (Fountain of the Turtles)" 1930 and "Conversation (Letter)" 1930 by Umberto Bottazzi (1865/1932). He also designed the Art Nouveau stained glass windows of Casino delle Civette (Owls' Little House) in Villa Torlonia, together with Cambellotti, Grassi and Paschetto

"In both works Bottazzi demonstrated both his skill as a colourist, and his skill in translating the pictorial characteristics of matter in the clothing, appearing more interested in what covers the woman's body, rather than in her physical structure" (Mary Elisa Tittoni)

"The newfangled" 1929/30 and "Fragment of composition" 1920/21 by Ferruccio Ferrazzi (1891/1978)

"An aura of mystery surrounds the scene through the ambiguous game of looks and poses. The details of the mirror, the ampoule, the feathers and the jewels refer to Renaissance representations of Vanitas (Vanity) and Venuses, but completely new is the mixture of colors which, from the cool shades of blue, lights up in the pink and red of the skin" (Maria Elisa Tittoni)

"Composition" 1938 by Afro (Afro Basaldella) (1912/76)

"The Shepherd's Family" 1927 by Mario Sironi (1885/1961)

"The canvas results in a rough painting by the strong archaic impact, recovering a figurative tradition widely theorized by the 'Novecento' (Twentieth Century) current of which Margherita Sarfatti was the great animator. (...) An essential landscape devoid of vegetation and airiness, a palette using only a few and dark colors, two simple architectural elements with functions of backdrops contribute to give the sense of an absolute space and time outside of history in which the two powerful figures symbolically assume the role of the primitive family from which future human events descend" (Maria Elisa Tittoni)

ROOM 3

"Bather" 1933/34 by Emanuele Cavalli (1904/81)

"Player of ping-pong" 1931 by Giuseppe Capogrossi (1900/72)

"Women get naked" 1934 by Mario Mafai (1902/65)

"Tumblers" 1933/34 by Nino Bertoletti (Umberto Natale) canvas full of fascination and suggestive aura. It tickles inquisitive curiosity in the viewer, prompted to imagine a story that could be likened to the one in the opera Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The warm light from above on the right illuminates the beautifully sensual body of the girl and seems to be reflected in the odd glasses of the boy

"Gym" 1934/35 by Fausto Pirandello (1899/1975) son of the great writer Luigi Pirandello

"In this rough gym, devoid of depth and light, the three male figures do not concede anything to the myth of physical beauty. The subject, apparently in tune with the fascist regime exaltation for sport, in fact denies the regenerative power in the fixity of repetitive gestures" (Maria Elisa Tittoni)

"Football Match" 1934 by Carlo Carrà (1881/1966) probably painted to mark the Italian victory in the 1934 World Cup played in Rome

"Carrà builds a scene very dynamic weaving the diagonals formed by the five figures of the players and accentuating the upward thrust with a foreshortened perspective. The agility and the vigor of the figures are fully matched by the strength of the bright colors" (Maria Elisa Tittoni)

"Sailor in space" 1934 by Enrico Prampolini (1894/1956) disintegrated fully anthropomorphic futuristic image

"Lovers" 1930 by Fillia (Luigi Colombo) (1904/36) versatile artist from the Piedmont region

"The two figures are now part of a primordial dimension, 'the image of a mysterious superhuman world'. The almost magmatic transfiguration of the bodies shows that they have crossed the border of reality and, overcoming the double gray frame, are leaving behind the space of history symbolized by the small buildings with trees placed in the bottom right" (Maria Elisa Tittoni)

Sculptures:

Marble "Female Bust" 1918 by Nicola D'Antino (1880/1966)

Bronze "Bust of a young girl" 1926/27 by Ettore Colla (1896/1968)

"Bather" 1934 by Marino Marini (1901/80) made out of peperino rock

SECOND FLOOR - ROME: REALITY AND VISION

ROOM 4

"St. Onuphrius on the Janiculum Hill" 1868 by Scipione Vannutelli (1834/94)

"Vannutelli solves this view with a light touch and a warm and soft light similar to Corot, revealing himself, even in his rare examples in this genre, a great landscape painter" (Cinzia Virno)

"View of Piazza Barberini" before 1865 by José Villegas Y Cordero (1848/1922)

Bernini's Fountain of the Bees was removed from its original position, documented in this painting, in 1865. It was installed in the current position in 1915

"Ancient baths at Ripetta" 1885 by Norberto Pazzini (1856/1937)

"Grottarossa" 1895/1900 by Adolfo De Carolis (1874/1928)

"Roman Forum" 1911 by Onorato Carlandi (1848/1939) sketch for the New Dawn triptych executed for the 1911 Rome Universal Exhibition and bought by the Imperial Gallery of Vienna

Watercolours "Via di Porta Latina" 1915 and "The Baths of Caracalla" 1916 by Pompeo Fabri (1874/1959) Onorato Carlandi's nephew and a member, like his uncle, of the Twenty-five of the Roman Campagna, an association of painters who loved painting the environs of Rome during outings together

"Pompeo Fabri dedicated his entire production to the city and its surroundings in works carried out mainly in watercolor. Fabri was a unique artist and, for the period in which he worked, was an oddity. Interested exclusively to the representation of the true, he gives an original interpretation entrusted to colors, subtle but striking and painted in wide-spread and light strokes, giving the images an unreal look, almost dream-like" (Cinzia Virno)

"The Pincio Hill from my studio" 1929 by Renato Tomassi (1884/1972)

"Trinità dei Monti" 1939/40 by Orfeo Tamburi (1910/94)

"Houses of Trajan's Forum" 1930 and "Demolition of Via Giulia" 1936 by Mario Mafai (1902/65) painted on the back of a canvas already used for the work Composition

"The year in which he painted Houses of Trajan's Forum is for Mafai, that of his first trip to Paris (...). It is likely that the work was painted after his return at the end of the year. The Parisian experience enriched his paintings with warm tones, carefully modulated, absorbed from the Impressionists and here discernible in the houses and in the ruins in the foreground" (Cinzia Virno)

"Demolition" 1939 by Afro (Afro Basaldella) (1912/76) on the back "Self Portrait" 1939

"The Colosseum" 1930 by Achille Funi (1890/1972) author of the mosaic above the altar in the left transept of the Basilica of St. Peter

"The artist gives to the two Roman monuments the theatricality of theater perspective backdrops through which, under a sky of intense blue, the city is visible with its buildings on the green Oppian Hill" (Cinzia Virno)

"The Cardinal Dean" 1930 by Scipione (Gino Bonichi) (1904/33) his absolute masterpiece

"Although he was from the Marche region, the artist's relationship with the city of Rome is very strong. The years 1929/30, under pressure of the disease which, in short, would lead him to death, are those of his more intense activity 'of urgency of the expression', and it is in 1930 that he makes this work by proposing, in symbolic expressionistic key, the portrait of Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli, dean of the Sacred College. (...) His inner torment, due to the awareness of a precarious existence, had certainly played a role in the development of the complex iconography, full of allegorical motifs. (...) Several references to important artistical predecedents due to his almost spasmodic desire for knowledge: the portrait of Innocent X by Velásquez, the paintings of Goya and El Greco, Italian art from Caravaggio to Magnasco" (Cinzia Virno)

"With a painting that refers to the style of European Expressionism Scipione combines his visionary dreams with the sumptuousness, sensuality and transience of Baroque Rome, almost an omen of the imminent end" (Ludovica Sebregondi - From the catalog of the exhibition Bellezza Divina)

"Meeting at the Colosseum" 1956 by Giovanni Stradone (1911/81)

"Falling as a dead leaf on Rome" 1940 by Sante Monachesi (1910/91) beautiful example of aeropainting

"Fragments and urban views that emerge from the clouds like apparitions or memories" (Sante Monachesi)

"From Oppian Hill" 1956 by Riccardo Francalancia (1886/1965)

"The Colosseum" 1958, "The Propylaea of the Villa Borghese" 1955 and "Morning in Ponte Sisto" 1955 by Francesco Trombadori (1886/1961) icy cold and surreal views of a metaphysical Rome

"Winter Sun" 1931 by Amedeo Bocchi (1883/1976)

"Casina Valadier on the Pincio Hill" 1920 by Francesco Ferraresi (1858/1942)

"Girl with a fan at the Trevi Fountain" 1955 by Camillo Innocenti (1871/1961)

"Music at the Pincio Hill" 1913 by Armando Spadini (1883/1925)

"In 1913 he participated in the first Roman Secession and knew the French painting of the Fauves and the Nabis, especially Matisse, Bonnard, Vallotton. A fundamental meeting for his career, in the year 1913/17, later denied and dismissed as 'this half term I had with Impressionism'" (Cinzia Virno)

"Villa Borghese and the Pincio Walk" 1936 by Franco Gentilini (1909/81)

"Roman Landscape" 1931 by Giovanni Guerrini (1887/1972)

"Roman Landscape" 1939 by Giuseppe Capogrossi (1900/72)

"Roman Landscape" 1935/38 by Fausto Pirandello (1899/1975)

"Roofs of Rome" 1957/59 by Renato Guttuso (1911/87) with a beautiful figurative realism, post-Cubism applied to the geometry of the roofs of Rome

Extraordinary and visionary altarpiece "Sic Transit...":

From the left "People Visions of the Plague", "The Pagan Temple", "The Lonely Rome", "The Young Church" and "War and plague run through the country" 1912 by Adolf Hirémy Hirschl (1860/1933) Hungarian, but Viennese by adoption, of whom there are also three sketches exhibited

"Painter and engraver, in 1898 he moved permanently to Rome and in 1913 he became academic of St. Luke. Volunteer in the Austrian army, he worked as a painter of war. In his production, next to the allegorical and history painting there are especially marine paintings inspired by Arnold Böcklin. Later in his paintings are also found expressions of pure moods and representations of dreams" (Stefania Gagliardini)

Sculptures: Bronze "Naiad with seahorse" 1896/1901 by Mario Rutelli (1859/1943) study for the Fountain of the Naiads in Piazza della Repubblica

White and polychrome marble "Mask of pain (self portrait)" 1909 by Adolfo Wildt (1868/1931)

Wood Sculpture "The cry" 1914/16 by Cornelio Palmerini (1892/1927)

"Wildt was a sculptor of European symbolism who, in the name of a spiritual research characterized by mysticism, exaggerated real features with a powerful stylization and an obsessive work of marble polishing. In his self portrait of 1909, or in smaller examples, as in The Scream by Cornelio Palmerini shortly after, the intensity of the images pushed towards expressionism expressed the crisis of Giolitti bourgeois' values which had brought to the impact with war" (Cinzia Virno)

THIRD FLOOR - THE SHAPE OF THINGS

ROOM 5

"Flowers" 1913 by Enrico Lionne (1865/1921)

"Joke" 1916 by Cipriano Efisio Oppo (1891/1962)

"Bananas" 1916 by Felice Carena (1879/1966)

"Still Life (alabaster)" 1923 by Riccardo Francalancia (1886/1965)

"His first oil paintings date to 1919, mostly still lifes and landscapes captured from real life and of small size, with suspended, motionless atmospheres, which already reveal precise stylistic choices oriented towards a realism happily balanced between primitiveness and research from the truth" (Alexandra Andresen - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)

"Still Life" 1934 by Mario Broglio (1891/1948)

"The spatial framework recalls Morandi's compositions of the early twenties, but above all those of his wife Edita Broglio. The alternation of curved and straight lines creates a passage and a conceptual harmony between the stiffness of the lines of books and tablecloth in the foreground, the formal precision of the curves in the pitcher and the cup in porcelain and the overblown petals of flowers, while the sharpness of the contours is reminiscent of the formal rigor of fifteenth century painting" (Federica Pirani)

"Still Life (vase of flowers)" 1928 by Roberto Melli (1885/1958)

"Still Life" 1934 by Luigi Trifoglio (1888/1939)

"Still Life" 1929 by Giovanni Romagnoli (1893/1976)

"Still life with red cabbage, mug and canvas" 1937 by Francesco Trombadori (1886/1961)

"He participated in the Secession of 1913 with paintings of pointillist imprint. Upon contact with the artists of Valori Plastici (Plastic Values), he then turned his research toward the Novecento movement (Twentieth century) painting works with domestic atmospheres of purist clarity. After World War II he devoted himself mainly to landscape" (Enciclopedia Treccani)

"In the study" 1926/29 by Leonetta Cecchi Pieraccini (1882/1977)

"Old papers" 1953 by Baccio Maria Bacci (1888/1974)

"The terrace (terrace in Sorrento)" 1866 by Pio Joris (1843/1921)

"Cabins" 1927 by Pasquarosa (Bertoletti Marcelli) (1896/1973)

"Red Gate" 1930 by Carlo Carrà (1881/1966)

"On the Beach" 1935 by Mario Tozzi ( 1895/1978) a true journey into the world of dreams

"Still Life (fish and bottle)" 1925 by Filippo De Pisis (1896/1956)

Glazed Ceramic "Tropical Forest" 1945/46 and painting "Autumn" 1934 by Alberto Savinio (1891/1952), pseudonym of Andrea de Chirico, Giorgio de Chirico's younger brother

"Pomegranates, grapes and ripe figs seem to allude to the classic symbols of love passion, laid out in a composition of baroque taste and softly treated in the Renoir's manner. They are separated from the landscape in the background by a heavy curtain decorated, a typical stylistic feature of metaphysics" (Federica Pirani)

Mosaic "Composition" 1933 by Gino Severini (1883/1966)

"Small town hotel" 1927 by Felice Casorati (1883/1963)

"The elements of the composition seem to follow the rules of rhetorical figures of speech, especially of metonymy. The close-up look on a few objects of Gozzani memory, recalls the intimate and secluded atmosphere of a country hotel. (...) As in several paintings with figures 'Casorati exhibit concrete objects, gaudy trinkets, tools, small daily rituals' (Fossati) as elements of a story, exerpts of a personal novel, drawn from his own biographical experience. These are also self-portraits 'with no character'" (Federica Pirani)

Sculptures:

Terracotta and wax "Nutial Cup Flora" 1915/20 by Vincenzo Gemito (1852/1929)

Bronze "Basin of the buffalos" 1908/10 and jasper and bronze "Precious Vase" 1923 by Duilio Cambellotti (1876/1960)

ROOM 6

"Sunflowers" 1931/32 by Martino Mazzacurati (1907/69)

"Still Life" 1932 by Giorgio Morandi (1890/1964) with extraordinary and illusionistic vibration of the objects

"The still lifes of the thirties are characterized by a renewed monumentality. Morandi has a closer look to the fore, eliminating the horizon and giving to his objects shapes and sizes often disturbing. Volumes are not, as a rule, suggested by the resources of chiaroscuro. The illusion of depth, and the emergence of the plans are achieved through the juxtaposition of uniformly colored areas, as in a marquetry perspective or a 'painting with light' of the fifteenth century. They are welded together along their edges and emerge uniform on the surface of the painting: only the different tone quality shows hints of their mutual position in space. Also the order of painting colors does not follow the traditional order (starting from the background and ending with the foreground) but a reverse one, with the background painted at the end: Morandi increases in this way the character of suspended timelessness of the still life" (Flavio Fergonzi - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)

"Still Life" 1934/36 by Virgilio Guzzi (1902/78)

"Sets of games" 1935 and "Rustic Objects" 1938 by Giuseppe Capogrossi (1900/72)

"Still Life" 1939 by Emanuele Cavalli (1904/81)

"Still Life" 1937 by Afro (Afro Basaldella) (1912/76)

"The work, in its innermost meaning, seems like a self-portrait where the painting in the background takes on the value of a mirror in which we see the artist himself. The painter, in the mental space of the painting, can play the instrument but he would also be able to catch one of those resting on the table to fix it, tune it or test the sound. The metaphorical meaning is evident: only the intervention of the artist enliven things that, otherwise, even if realistically portrayed, could not make sounds" (Federica Pirani)

"Polenta cooked on a strong fire" 1924/26 by Fortunato Depero (1892/1960) from the Trentino region

ROOM 7

"Doubt" 1907/08 absolute masterpiece of Giacomo Balla (1871/1958) from Turin

Oil on paper with beautiful and unusual portrait of a woman, Elisa, model and wife of the painter portrayed with restless depth and alienating plasticity: one of the greatest Italian masterpieces of the early twentieth century, a modernist Mona Lisa with a smile just as enigmatic

Three other paintings by Giacomo Balla: "Portrait of Nathan" 1910 (mayor of Rome in the years 1907/13 and 1917/19) commissioned by Nathan himself. Pastel on paper "Portrait of Onorato Caetani" 1910 (Mayor of Rome from 1890 to 1892). "Portrait of Annina Levi della Vida" 1930/40

"Bust of a Woman" 1907/12 by Auguste Rodin (1840/1917)

"It has a vibrant surface reflecting precise knowledge of anatomy and making any area sensitive to light, from the fine details of clothing to the softness of the epidermis" (Maria Catalano)

OTHER MASTERPIECES OF THE GALLERY

Sculptures by Ettore Ximenes (1855/1926)

Paintings "Comitia" 1950, one of the most recent acquisitions in the gallery, "Ruins of Warsaw" 1948 and "Futuristic" 1962 by Giulio Turcato (1912/95) abstract painter whose art is a continuous and interesting exploration of shapes and colors

Bronze bas-relief "Deposition" 1946 by Pericle Fazzini (1913/1987)

"The composition, apparently disorganized and random, is actually carefully calibrated and held in a space built with quick and concise language, adhering to the increasingly dramatic climate of our times. (...) The message that the artist wants to communicate, however, unlike other contemporary works, (...) is a positive message of hope for humanity: the wind blowing through and giving soul to the whole composition is (...) a wind which comes to wipe out all the conflicts and sorrows. For those who believe in Christ (...) the Deposition is the end of suffering and the beginning of the path to the Resurrection" (Francesca Sborgi – Catalogue of the exhibition Bellezza Divina)

"View of Ninfa" 1890, "Roman Countryside" dated 1890/99 and the phantasmagorical triptych "The wise and the foolish virgins" 1890/91 by Giulio Aristide Sartorio (1860/1932)

"Rest" 1916 by Antonio Discovolo (1874/1956)

"Figure-gray" 1943 by Emanuele Cavalli (1904/81) with, on the back, "Still Life"

"Speculum Dianae" 1909 by Enrico Coleman (1846/1911)

"Aeropainting" by Osvaldo Peruzzi (1907/2004)

"Bullfight" 1929/30 by Enrico Prampolini (1894/1956)

"The Tiber near S. Sabina" and "Roman Countryside" by Onorato Carlandi (1848/1939)

"Still life with asparagus" 1928 by Francesco Trombadori (1886/1961)

"Still Life # 1" 1935 by Gianni Vagnetti (1897/1956)

"Roman Landscape" 1939 by Giorgio Morandi (1890/1964)

"Landscape" 1934 by Alberto Ziveri (1908/90)

"The Tiber near Rome" 1915 by Dante Ricci (1879/1957)

"Family Group under the Arches" 1914 and "Under the pergola" 1914 by Armando Spadini (1883/1925)

"To talk of Armando Spadini, of his art which is a song to child grace, to family intimity, to light and color, to all that speaks to our hearts and laughs in our eyes, it is a grateful task, repose of the soul" (Adolfo Venturi)