Friday, January 24, 2014

NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART (fifth part)

MONOGRAPHIC ROOMS

Room 34 - Giacomo Balla

Eight works of the great Giacomo Balla (1871/1958) from Turin:
In the triptych oil on canvas Affections, Balla portrays his wife Elisa and her daughter Luce in a moving intimate glimpse
“Independent temperament, confident, self-taught artist. Still very young, in 1893, came to settle in Rome, bringing with him the memory of the haloed dense colors of Fontanesi, and the pointillist palette of Previati and Pelizza da Volpedo, along with the romantic and lyrical overtones of their social 'piety'. His education was completed in Paris, where he spent some months in 1900, assimilating Lombard Pointillism with something of the depth of light of Seurat, Signac and Cross, but also receiving special realistic suggestions by the virtuosity and pathos of Eugène Carrière. Back in Rome, he worked hard in his studio near Pincian Gate, then on the outskirts of the city, isolated among the Villa Borghese gardens and the nearby countryside, gathering around young artists anxious of modernity, such as Boccioni and Severini, who obtained in that study, with the first lessons, the first opening to a modern experimental methodology of color and light that from the principles of Pointillism was to carry them to the dynamic achievements of Futurism” (Maurizio Calvesi - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)

Room 35 - Giacomo Manzù

Five sculptures and five reliefs by Giacomo Manzù (1908/91):
Wax statue “Susan” about 1937
Wax statue “Bust of Woman” about 1938
Bronze statue “Cardinal” about 1938
Bronze statue “The Great Pieta” about 1943
Wax statue “Bust of Carla” 1942
Relief “Deposition” 1941/42
Relief “Deposition with Soldier” 1942 with Longinus, the Roman soldier who pierced Jesus with a spear, wearing a German helmet
Relief “Crucifixion” 1939/40
"Manzù had in himself (...) a deep afflatus, an inspiration, which led him to consider the divine presence in each creature afflicted and persecuted by the negative forces that act upon the earth after the prerogatives of oppression. Of these creatures Christ would become, in his representation, the highest example, as himself a creature and subject to the same torments" (De Micheli – Catalogue of the exhibit Bellezza Divina)
Relief “Crucifixion” 1940/42
 “The work of art arises solely and only by a movement of love... The key to your work is that from your inmost a fire should develop that invests the matter and that cannot remain simply that, because under your hands it should sublimate in spirit. The plastic conception should not be inspired by formal prejudice but only by love” (Giacomo Manzù)

Room 37 - Renato Guttuso

Seven paintings by the Sicilian Renato Guttuso (1911/87):
"Here is visible the transition of the artist from the Realism still characterizing the Seventies to a painting more disturbing and visionary, made up of dreamlike suggestions and fantastic and allusive images, as in this case. The artist's muse is at this time Marta Marzotto, who could perhaps be identified with the tiger crossing the courtyard of the Palazzo del Grillo where Guttuso resided, in an atmosphere shrouded in unreal twilight" (GNAM Website - www.gnam.beniculturali.it)
“In the art of Guttuso one feels a transformation in 1940 from the lyrical image to the concreteness of things, even in landscapes and still lifes that exceed the limits of the filtering poetry of Morandi. Guttuso's creativity becomes increasingly dramatic” (Raffaele De Grada - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)

Room 38 - Giorgio de Chirico

Thirteen extraordinary paintings by Giorgio de Chirico (1888/1978):
“Portrait of Mother” 1911
"Around the end of the Sixties De Chirico went through a revival of some of his metaphysical iconography of the decades 1910 and 1920. This production will be defined later by Maurizio Calvesi 'New Metaphysics'. In this case, the knight is on horseback, painted as a black silhouette with jagged contours, tortured and dug by the painting of the artist who wraps him in a shadowy, dark environment, denying him the plasticity of a body and thus giving a sense of unrest to the representation" (GNAM Website - www.gnam.beniculturali.it)
"The original version of The Disquieting Muses was made in 1918. This canvas is signed and dated 1925, but the date has been extended to 1947. For the iconography of the muses have been proposed several classical references: Ippodamia from the east pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia (Olympia Museum) for the mannequin standing and a statuette from Iraq dated to 2290-2255 BC, Gudea I (Paris, Musée du Louvre), for the mannequin sitting" (GNAM Website - www.gnam.beniculturali.it)

Room 40 - Pino Pascali

Eighteen conceptual works by Pino Pascali (1935/68)
Born in Bari, he moved to Rome when he was 20 and died in a motorcycle accident only 32 years old. In the short period of his artistic career he took on different figurative activities, from set design to graphic design and worked as well in the Italian TV advertising successful program Carosello
“To the image of aggressive femininity that was beginning to show up in advertising in those years refers Lips Close Up, the close up of a female mouth that, thanks to the relief of the board, is facing us in all its boldness” (Martina De Luca)
“Torso of a black woman” 1964-65
“Bale” 1967
"In this work he goes so far as to question the very name of still life. In Group of characters (or Characters for a Puppet Theater), referring to the language of advertising and comic books, he created small sculptures self-propelled on wheels driven by motors for toys that simulate fruit and other objects designed to appear to the forefront of a wooden puppet theater in the course of happenings" (GNAM Website - www.gnam.beniculturali.it)
“Basket” 1968
“The bow of Ulysses” 1968
“Plowed fields, irrigation canals” 1967
“The cycle of 'fake sculptures' is essentially divided into two groups: the first includes prehistoric animals (dinosaurs, whales, dolphins, sharks, reptiles) while the other is inspired by pure and uncontaminated nature: white cliffs, the sea, waterfalls, bamboo. In these works the strongest component is the spectacular one but there are also surreal elements visible in the ability to mix with skill and irony that always accompanies the work of Pascali the gigantism of the big toys, the monumentality of Romanesque white color reminiscent of Apulia, the comics of BC that the artist loved to read” (From the website of the Fondazione Museo Pino Pascali - www.museopinopascali.it)

Other areas

RESTAURANT ARTS CAFÉ
Bronze statues:
“Undine” 1898 by Giuseppe Renda (1862/1939)
“Diana the huntress” 1890 by Ercole Rosa (1846/94)
“Whirlwind” 1895 by Urbano Nono (1849/1925)
“Water Bearer” 1920/21 by Amleto Cataldi (1882/1930)
“The poetry of Amleto Cataldi, classically inspired, was 'to give a plastic expression, which in addition to being a daily warning to the spirit, would also be a rest and a visual recreation in harmony and beauty ... For me, beauty is one and universal and it was realized by no other than the Greeks ... I want the work to be appreciated not only in its synthesis, but in every part... I want a hand or a foot of my statue to have the power to resurrect it all completely in the imagination of an observer...'“ (Amleto Cataldi - Quote from Francesco Sessa's blog)
KOSUTH COURTYARD
“The iis quae ad speculum et in speculo” 2005 installation by the American Joseph Kosuth (1945)
CENTRAL COURTYARD
Bronze sculpture “Man Shot” 1954/55 by Marino Mazzacurati (1907/69)
Marble sculpture “Enigma” 1919 by Attilio Selva (1888/1970) from Trieste
“This sculpture gave Selva undisputed fame when exposed in Rome in 1921. For the concluded and solid form of the woman, who seems to anticipate Art Decò elements, including symbolist suggestions and memories of Secession taste, the critics talk about a study of Egyptian and Indian art, and that is why it is traditionally dated after the trip to Egypt at the court of King Faad (1919) for whom the sculptor produces coins and two portraits” (Giovanna Caterina de Feo)
EXPO 1 AND EXPO 2 AREAS

Large areas of the museum dedicated to temporary exhibitions

No comments:

Post a Comment