TOWARDS MODERNITY 1886 - 1925
Room 14 - To Paris
In the second half of the nineteenth
century many Italian painters went to Paris to be updated on the new artistic
trends. The French capital had taken the place of the Italian peninsula that
still at the end of the previous century was the powerful engine and inspiring
place of European artistic life
Pastel on paper “Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi” 1886 by Giovanni Boldini (1842/1931)
Executed during the Verdi's stay in Paris
for a performance of Otello. It is the second of the two portraits Boldini
painted of Verdi of whom he was a great admirer. The first is an oil painting
now in the Retirement Home for Musicians in Milan but it did not satisfy
Boldini
This image was printed on the banknote for one-thousand
liras from 1969 to 1981
“This second portrait, the result of a short
posing session, satisfied Boldini. Verdi arrived in the studio alone, cold,
with a vibrant and intense gaze, appearing in fact to the painter in a less
official way but with far greater expressive intensity. Boldini in just three
hours fixed his features and, one might almost say, his personality, providing
a reading of the character, from which a melancholic fragility seems to emerge”
(Anna Villari)
“Le Cabanon de Jourdan” 1906 by Paul Cézanne (1839/1906), the only one of his
paintings to be present in an Italian public collection
“The painting is very plausibly the one the
artist was working on in the fall of 1906, shortly before his death on October
15 while painting near Aix-en-Provence. (...) It exemplifies well the late
activity of Cézanne. (...) Like the Impressionists Cezanne also frees his
brushwork from descriptive obligations, but he charges it of the task of giving
greater consistency to the objects. The boundary line is gone, the figures
aren't anymore defined by drawings, it is the color that builds them with
brushstrokes that look like cards or scales. He seems to handle everything with
the same attention: a stretch of water, sky or the ground is no less important
than a pretty face or a hand and it is no less 'formed' than them” (Elena di
Majo)
“Poachers in the Snow” 1867 by Gustave Courbet (1819/77)
“He studied in depth the varied effects of
light on the white snow. (...) He worked hard to replicate the atmospheric and
spacial depth of the sky and of the snowy slope where the silhouettes of
hunters and dogs stand out with their colored shadows” (Elena di Majo)
“Woman
on Sand” 1874/75 and “The
Little English Girl” 1879/80 by Giuseppe De
Nittis (1846/84)
“De Nittis moved to Paris in 1874 and
participated in the first Impressionist exhibition. He received a considerable
success with urban landscapes and paintings done on typical themes of modern
life, formally characterized by a moderate combination of Impressionism with
the easy style of a painting of workshop commercial and very popular” (Carlo
Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
“Pink Water Lilies” 1897/98 by Claude Monet (1840/1926), the most radical
Impressionist painter of all. He painted his countless Water Lilies from 1909
onwards
“Little
Home at Montmartre” 1879/88 by Federico
Zandomeneghi (1841/1917)
Sculptures “Horse
trotting” 1885/86 (cast 1919) and “Dancer
with Tambourine” about 1885 (cast 1919), painting “After the Bath” about 1886 by Edgar Degas (1834/1917)
“Subject typical of the eighties of the
series of 'Naked Bodies', similar to bathers by Renoir, After the Bath is a
particularly significant example of the French master's studies on the movement
of the body of the models surprised by the observation of the artist in
intimate and unusual acts. It is executed with the fast pastel technique with
frays color with light effects, and therefore impressionistic, to accentuate
the deforming position of the figure that bends on itself after the ablutions”
(Mario Ursino)
Bronze bust “Sculptor
Dalou” about 1883 and bronze sculptures “The Age of Bronze”
1875/76 and “Dancer
Girl” about 1910 by Auguste Rodin
(1840/1917)
“Rodin for the Age of Bronze took as a model
a young French soldier, with whom he was experimenting different body positions
until he would find one more in harmony with nature and therefore independent
of a particular subject. The title was then given after the completion of the work
which, for its extraordinary naturalness, caused at its appearance some
accusations of having been modeled directly from life” (Elena di Majo)
Fifteen sculptures by Medardo Rosso (1858/1928) in the center of the room:
“Bookmaker”
1894 (copy made in the years 1895/1901)
“Portrait of Henry Rouart” 1889/90 (cast
1929)
“Man
reading” 1894
“Yvette
Guilbert” 1895
“Portrait of Madame Noblet” 1897/98
(plaster)
“Enfant
au soleil” 1892
“The
Woman Doorkeeper” 1883 (cast 1905)
“Ecce
Puer” 1905
“Jewish Child” 1895/1902
“The plastic work of Medardo Rosso
originated in the naturalist field - his subjects are largely naturalistic -
and developed, with the knowledge of Impressionism and Rodin, as research on
the possibility of giving shape and meaning to material through light. The
visual language of Rosso - backed by the use of sensitive materials such as wax
and gypsum - highlighted significant matches with the painting of the
Impressionists, from which it differs, however, for his interest in the
subject, never intended as a mere figurative pretext” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano
Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
Room 15 - The humanitarian utopia
The artists participating in Symbolism in
Europe and in Divisionism (Pointillism) in Italy expressed in their works the
social tensions of the time finding a utopian hope for improvement in socialist
and positivist ideals
“The Sun” 1904 by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (1868/1907)
This work was bought by National Gallery of
Modern Art in 1906 and it was comforting for the painter who had suffered a
severe psychological crisis after his masterpiece “Fourth Estate”, which he
completed in 1901 and on which he had worked for ten years, didn't receive the
appreciation he had expected
In 1907, however, after the sudden death of
his wife, he hanged himself not yet forty
“The painter of the Fourth Estate had
reached the conviction that a pure landscape, of such a high degree of formal
abstraction from reality, could have a social value, because even the so-called
inanimate representations of nature can be particularly and socially useful to
man, 'taking it from amorphous, anarchic reality, into an organic socialist
reality'“ (Anna Maria Damigella)
“While recognizing that the grand spectacle
'escapes our small means of reproduction', the artist wants, with his painting,
'tighten ever nearer to imprison it in its own colored matter'. No less
visionary is the dream of a bright future for humanity contained in those
extraordinary spokes made of many split colors” (Maria Vittoria Marini
Clarelli)
“Cycle
of the living” by the immense Giacomo Balla
(1871/1958):
“The
Beggar” 1902
“The figure of the beggar is caught in the
church of S. Maria in Cosmedin. The horizontal and vertical lines in their
rigid spatial system seem to support the man. The soft brush strokes and the
light that caresses his head show the deep pity and intense sympathy with which
Balla represents the subject” (Alice Orlandi)
“The
Sick” 1903
“Painted from life during experimental
treatment with electric shocks, the work is pervaded by such a silence and
endless wait. The strong brightness of the equipment, like bars, gives the
sense of their condition of prisoners” (Alice Orlandi)
“The Crazy Woman” 1905
“Balla reveal the drama of the subject from
the outside: the female figure is rendered in all its drama and impact of the
gesture with a lit pointillist technique” (Alice Orlandi)
“Viaticum” 1884 by Angelo
Morbelli (1853/1919)
“Farmer at work” about 1909 by Umberto Boccioni (1882/1916)
“Before learning the Cubist language of
Picasso, Gris, Delaunay, Léger (which happened in the second half of 1911 with
his second trip to Paris), Boccioni's painting was based primarily on research
of post-impressionist and pointillist type: the Italian (from Previati to Balla)
and French Divisionism (Pointillism), the French and even German Impressionism,
the sculpture of Medardo Rosso constitute its cultural platform. (...) The
culture of Boccioni, however, was never based on one-way choices, but it was
open, ready to be enriched by new and different experiences. (...) Overall his
figure, which is the highest and most complete expression of Italian futurism,
has a place of pride in the history of the artistic avant-garde” (Maurizio
Calvesi - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)
“Portrait
of Giovanni Cena” about 1909 by Felice
Carena (1879/1966)
“The rendition of the figures painted in
bright colors that fade into a dark background is typical of the early Roman
period, when the artist developed the symbolic component of his training in
Turin looking at the paintings of Eugène Carrière, with its evanescent forms,
tending to monochrome but also to Antonio Spadini, with his use of bright and
fluffy colors” (Sabrina Spinazzè)
“Lunch”
about 1910 by the Austrian Albin Egger-Lienz (1868/1926)
“The journey of life” 1905 by the Austrian John Quincy Adams
(1874/1933)
“Executed in Valendam, in Holland, it offers
the metaphor of the 'journey of life' in the representation of genre scenes
related to the world of Dutch fishers. Trained in Vienna, then in Monaco and
Paris, the painter was greatly appreciated by the high society in Vienna, by
which it was chosen primarily as a portraitist. In 1906 the work was entitled
'We must go to God through many sorrows'“ (Mariastella Margozzi)
“After a tiring job” 1910 by the Hungarian Döme Skuteczky (1850/1921)
“The theme of the modern industrial world is
interpreted by the Hungarian painter by strong chiaroscuro contrasts in an epic
dimension that exceeds happily didactic realism” (Stefania Frezzotti)
“Workers”
1905 by the Belgian painter and sculptor Constantin
Meunier (1831/1915). He was responsible for the huge Monument to Labor
in Brussels
“The Gardener” 1889 and “L'Arlesienne” (Portrait of M.me Ginoux) 1890
by Vincent Van Gogh (1853/90)
The two masterpieces by Van Gogh were
stolen in 1998 during an armed robbery claimed by the so-called armed
phalanx. The police found themselves the paintings under the bed at the
home of an accomplice
“With the Gardener Van Gogh returned to the
theme of the peasant life of his first period in Neuen, but he revived it with
new symbolic intent in relation to the intrinsic relationship between man and
nature” (Elena di Majo)
“In the Arlesienne the two books on the
table, 'La Case de l'oncle Tom' Beecher Stowe and 'Contes de Noël' by Dickens,
allude to the humanitarian values of the artist that he also attributed to the
woman portrayed as ethical connotations. (...) M.me Ginoux, who had assisted
him on the occasion of his violent crisis and also subject to nervous disorders
herself, awoke in him feelings of empathy in the common suffering” (Stefania
Frezzotti)
“Hospital”
1895 by Silvio Rotta (1853/1913)
“Withdrawing
the nets” 1896 by the Spanish Joaquìn
Sorolla Y Bastida (1863/1923)
Room 16 - The art of the
dream
“The reaction against Positivism and
Naturalism ends at the end of the nineteenth century, in an art based on ideas
and symbols. The new poetic flows mainly through the exhibitions: the Salons of
the Rosacroce, the Secessions of Monaco, Vienna and Berlin and the Venice
Biennale, founded in 1895. In Italy Symbolism follows two main routes: the
myth, represented by De Carolis and Sartorio, and the light, represented by the
pointillists Segantini, Pellizza and Previati, looking for modernity beyond
reality, in the spiritual and moral ideals” (GNAM Website -
www.gnam.beniculturali.it)
Four masterpieces by Gaetano Previati (1852/1920):
Triptych “Fall
of Angels” about 1913 and “The creation of light” about 1913
“The themes are consistent with his
education in the context of history: they are the sacred religious allegorical
themes of the Renaissance masters' paintings, but renewed by the insight that
the only way to keep alive the continuity was to retrieve 'the wide brightness,
the fiery poise, the sumptuous inexhaustible ardor, the deep skill' (Boccioni)
of those masters” (Anna Maria Damigella)
“Funeral of a virgin” 1912/13
“It brings a theme congenial to Previati's
ideal inspiration and spiritualism in a composition that accentuates the
monumental decorative repetition and seriality inherent to the subject. The
division as a triptych is intended to highlight the central part of the bier of
the dead girl and to interrupt the abnormal horizontal and the static uniform
aligned figures, highlighted by the systematic application of small linear
brushstrokes” (Anna Maria Damigella)
“Torment” 1901
“Major exponent of Italian Divisionism
(Pointillism) of late nineteenth century, as well as a theorist of the movement,
Gaetano Previati engaged in a symbolist painting of strong emotions filtered
through the study and admiration for the French artist Odilon Redon. His use of
color applied on canvas through a filamentous technique, his fierce backlight
dipping against bodies and landscapes, create a disturbing and mysterious charm”
(Andrea Pomella)
“Summer
on Lake Como” about 1889, “Winter
in Mountain” 1898/1903, “Fog
is coming up from the valley…” 1895 and “What
peace in Valganna!” 1894 by Vittore Grubicy
De Dragon (1851/1920)
“The Castalidi” 1905
by Adolfo De Carolis (1874/1928)
“The mythic and symbolic theme of the
Castalia spring, sacred to Apollo and the Muses, expresses the comforting
vision of the eternal renewal capacity of art, in the words of the inscription
along the frame, as is customary among the Pre-Raphaelites. The painting
testifies the profound influence of Burne-Jones in understanding myth as a
means of revelation of timeless and enigmatic values, while from the formal
point of view De Carolis creates a unique figurative syncretism with references
to Botticelli and the idealist and symbolist painting” (Stefania Frezzotti)
“The Three Ages” 1905 by Gustav Klimt (1862/1918), absolute masterpiece of the Austrian
genius, leader of the Secession style, the artistic movement that in 1897 broke
away from the traditionalist Viennese Academy
“The different approaches to life are
suggested by the positions of the figures and the choice to represent them on
various levels of a bare background free of naturalistic elements. The painter
portrays the old woman in profile to highlight, through a strong realism of the
modeling, the deformation caused by time on her body. The renouncement to open
her eyes to reality, the impotence in the face of what the future holds is
manifest in the desperate gesture of covering her face with one hand. The young
mother instead offers herself to the front view, in contrast to the other
figure: her naked body in the relief seems flat and light in color to evoke an
almost sacred dimension, an allusion to the maternity of the Virgin Mary who is
also referred to by the crowning of flowers placed on her head. A stylized
snake, camouflaged with transparent cloth wrapped around the legs, indicates
the evil lurking, the looming danger in every moment of life” (Giorgia Course -
Official Web Site GNAM)
“The contrast between the stylization of the
young woman and the naturalism of the old one has a symbolic value: the first
stage of life is characterized by infinite possibilities and metamorphosis, the
last by immutable uniformity, in which one cannot escape the scrutiny with
reality: the first phase is characterized by the dream ... the last by the
inability to dream” (Eva di Stefano)
“Cemetery of Ostia Antica” 1904 and “Malaria” about 1905 by Giulio Aristide Sartorio (1860/1932)
“To be or not to be. Who loves not is not”
about 1879 by Nino Costa (1826/1903)
He took part in the breach of Porta Pia,
and was elected council member but he was appreciated more in England where he
lived for a long time than in Italy
“Arguing with the captivating virtuosity of
colors and the easy and rich way of expression introduced by Mariano Fortuny in
Rome, Costa wanted to promote a different practice of art mindful of the truth
but also attentive to what was happening on the international scene. Thanks to
its links with foreign artists, especially British, his organizational skills
gave birth to the Golden Club first, then to the Scuola Etrusca (Etruscan
School) and eventually to the association In Arte Libertas” (Maria Elisa
Tittoni)
Marble bust “Atte”
1892 by Adolfo Wildt (1868/1931)
“Atte, freed woman favored by Nero, was the
only one to mourn him and to bury his body. Wildt had a deep knowledge of the
past and studied in depth the Hellenistic sculptures of the National Museum of
Naples, as he himself relates in his memories. (...) Even in this early work by
Wildt the theme of pain closed in on itself is evident as well as his excellent
technique in the treatment of marble of which he was always considered a
master” (Stefania Frezzotti)
Marble Statue “Farinata
degli Uberti” 1901/03 by Carlo Fontana (1865/1956)
Marble relief “Kindred
in the afterlife” about 1895/99 by Paul
Albert Bartholomé (1848/1928)
Marble statue “The Old Woman” about 1908 by the Croatian Ivan Meštrović (1883/1962)
“The stark description and the posture of
the nude body show the derivation from Klimt's Three Ages and Meštrović's
formation in the Secession period but it is also detectable the influence of
Rodin and Bourdelle sculptures studied in Paris in 1908” (Stefania Frezzotti)
Room 17 - Hero and superman
Nietzsche's ideas are reflected in the
figurative arts with the rediscovery of the Greek myth, and of the vital
principle, even if obscure, represented by Dionysus as opposed to the rational
and clear principle represented by Apollo
The idea of the superman of Nietzsche, also
because of the manipulations of his sister Elisabeth, would be unfortunately
adopted by the Nazis, with tragic consequences
“Fight of the Centaurs” 1909 by Giorgio de Chirico (1888/1978)
“The painting is clearly inspired by the
Battle of the Centaurs, painted in 1873 by Arnold Böcklin, and it is part of
the group of metaphysical works, many of which were destroyed by the artist
himself” (Mario Ursino)
“Treasures of the Sea” 1901 by Plinio Nomellini (1866/1943)
Pointillist painter from Leghorn who lived
in Genoa for a long time. He was a friend of Giacomo Puccini, Grazia Deledda,
Eleonora Duse and Gabriele D'Annunzio
Marble statue “Humanity against Evil” 1908 by Gaetano Cellini (1875/1957)
“The lines of the epigraph show the
allegorical intent of the sculpture, while in the monumental and dramatic posture
of the male nude one can detect the influence of Rodin's Michelangelism”
(Stefania Frezzotti)
“Pygmalion” 1896 by Giulio Bargellini (1896/1936)
“Gymnastics”
and “Working
wood and iron” two of the eighteen “Panels of the Allegories of the
Arts” executed in 1900 by Paolo Gaidano (1861/1916) also in the Arts Café Room and in the
four vestibules. Oil paintings on canvas simulating mosaics during the Neo-Renaissance
Revival of the turn of the century
Bronze statue “The Young Man and Death”
1911/12 by Daniele De Strobel (1873/1942)
“The Fountain of the Swamp” 1912/13 by Duilio Cambellotti (1876/1960)
Bronze statue “To
Frisio” 1883 by Achille D'Orsi (1845/1929)
“Engraved
plaque (Baccelli's plaque)” 1903 by Carlo
Fontana (1865/1956)
Guido Baccelli (1830/1916) was Minister of
Education and Minister of Agriculture several times from 1879 to 1903. He
promoted the archaeological walk at Porta Capena, established the National
Gallery of Modern Art and promoted the excavations of Pompeii and the Baths of
Caracalla
"The work is
a quote of suovetaurilia, depicted in the Forum of Trajan, the Roman
purification rituals involving the sacrifice of the animals more valuable to
the farmer. On the back side of the plate is represented a doctor. Mercury is
here personified as the protecting genius of trade, probably an allusion to the
post of Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, held by Baccelli in the
years 1901-1903" (Official Website of GNAM - www.gnam.beniculturali.it)
Painting “Roman
Sunset” 1892 by Onorato Carlandi (1848/1939)
The beautiful red color evokes the tuff
present in the land of what looks like the country between the Appian Way and
the Ardeatina Road
Painting “Cloistered” 1904 by Umberto Prencipe (1879/1962)
Bronze statue “Dancing
Faun” 1906 by Augusto Rivalta (1837/1925)
Bronze statue “Player
of ocarina” 1881 by Luigi Secchi (1853/1921)
Bronze statue “Indian Knight on the Lookout” 1893 by Paolo Troubetzkoy
(1866/1938)
“Theme unusual in the production of the
sculptor, brilliant celebrator of the cosmopolitan high society at the turn of
two centuries, the Lookout is inspired by the suggestions made by the American
circus of Buffalo Bill, who, during a European tour, made a stop in Milan in
1891. (...) Troubetzkoy, however, syncretizes the Western iconography of this
rider in a robust and monumental, even classical flavor, not far from the
syntax of the equestrian monument” (Matteo Lafranconi)
Bronze sculpture “Athlete
struggling with a python” 1877 by Frederic
Leighton (1830/96). English painter and sculptor, one of the most
important and representative of the Victorian period
“The direct comparison with classical
sculpture (the obvious source of Laocoon) is parallel to the attention to
models of the Renaissance, especially Michelangelo, always underpinning the
imagination poetical and formal of the artist, trained in Florence and later
participant, in Rome, in the academic cultural climate that committed to evoke
classical beauty in the morphologies, immanent and archetypal, of the popular
models” (Matteo Lafranconi)
Bronze statue “Cain” 1902 by Domenico
Trentacoste (1856/1933) from Palermo
“The dramatic figure of Cain devastated by
remorse seems to show an early direct knowledge, by Trentacoste, of the Thinker
by Rodin's Gate of Hell (1880), itself derived from the pose of the Ugolino by
Carpeaux and from the Damned in Michelangelo's Last Judgment” (Stefania
Frezzotti)
Plaster sculpture “Sergio
giving a dirty look” 1911 by Ivan Meštrović
(1883/1962)
Room 18 - La Belle époque
“The long period of peace that goes from
1870 to 1914 was called Belle époque, a term which ended up indicating
especially the high society of fin de siècle in its social rites between Paris
and the new elegant destinations for vacations. Cosmopolitan aristocrats and
nouveau riche, adventurers, femmes fatales and dandy, intellectual arbiters of
taste, as Oscar Wilde, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Marcel Proust, combined to
revolutionize lifestyles” (GNAM Website - www.gnam.beniculturali.it)
“The races in the Bois de Boulogne”: “In the
grandstand,” “Next to the stove”, “On the chair” 1881 by Giuseppe de Nittis (1846/84)
He was an Apulian
artist who moved to Paris when he was twenty-two. He died there at only
thirty-nine
“The three episodes are marked by a triptych
structure and unified in the foreground by the rhythm of the straw-bottomed
chairs, used by women, men, dogs. It is a social scene but also a social fable,
whose protagonist is a young blonde woman progressing towards a more convenient
location. Anybody who watches the work, however, as most of the spectators of
the races, is not allowed to see the horses: we see only the forest of
umbrellas on the lawn. The crowd, in fact, is looking mostly at itself as it
shows off fur coats and fashionable hats in all shades of brown and black”
(Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli)
“Madamoiselle Lanthèlme” 1907 e “Marquise
Casati with peacock feathers” about 1912 by Giovanni
Boldini (1842/1931)
“After having formed with the 'Macchiaioli'
painters and having studied the works of Frans Hals, the Dutch portrait painter
of the seventeenth century, Boldini developed a fast, cursive painting
technique, based on the virtuous touch, which made him the painter par
excellence of urban sophistication in the nineteenth century” (Carlo Bertelli,
Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
“Portrait
of Teresa Maglione Oneto” 1879 by Domenico
Morelli (1823/1901)
“Portrait
of Otto Messinger” 1909 e “Portrait
of Mrs. Pantaleoni” 1894 by Antonio Mancini
(1852/1930)
Bronze statues “Mother and daughter” 1911
and “My wife” 1911 by Paolo
Troubetzkoy (1866/1938)
“Portrait of Paolo Troubetzkoy” 1908 by Ilj’a Efimovič Repin (1844/1930) one of the greatest
Russian artists of all time
“The main protagonist of the parable of the
entire Russian Realism genre, at ease in small as in large formats,
investigator in the field of history and social painting, in landscape and
actualized genre scenes, but first and foremost champion in the field of
portraiture” (Matteo Lafranconi)
“Villa Borghese Park of the Deer” 1911 and “Portrait
in open air” about
1902 by Giacomo Balla (1871/1958)
“Vila Borghese Park of the Deer was supposed
to decorate the dining room of the Princess of Bassiano. The structure of the
polyptych, in Art Noveau style, is composed according to the technique of
photomontage, with a method related more to a compositional scheme than to the
truth of the landscape. The square with the fountain, behind the Borghese
Gallery, close to the Park of the Deers, is in fact doubled in size,
articulating and balancing areas of shadow and light” (Paola Guarnera -
Official Web Site GNAM)
“Ceramics
and glass art”, “Printing”, “Music”, “Weaving”
and “Astronomy” five of the eighteen “Panels of the Allegories of the Arts”
executed in 1900 by Paolo Gaidano (1861/1916)
Room 19 - The high society
portrait
“Portrait of daughter Irene” 1897 by Cesare Tallone (1853/1919)
Sumptuous yet intimate portrayal of a girl
of nine years of whom one can guess the strong personality
“Woman in open countryside” 1889 by Giacomo Grosso (1860/1938)
“With a lively and exuberant temperament,
sensitive to expressiveness of color values, far from dramatic or unpleasant
aspects of life, Grosso located in the cosmopolitan aristocratic portraiture
his most congenial medium of expression, painting an uninterrupted series of
female figures with backgrounds of outdoor landscapes or indoors” (Matteo
Lafranconi)
Bronze statue “Rebirth” 1895 (cast 1897) by Ettore Ximenes (1855/1926)
“One of the most representative works of
Neo-Renaissance and Art Nouveau sculpture. Through the presence of a female
figure, graceful and lithe, this bronze wants to be a homage to Botticelli,
mentioned in the inscription which runs on the base (Alexander Botticellius
florentinus dedit lumens), and to the cult of youth in the season of flowers”
(Sabrina Spinazza)
“Portrait
of Amélie Rives Louis” 1895 and marble bust “Portrait
of Princess Dorothea Odescalchi” 1921 by Paolo
Troubetzkoy (1866/1938)
“The small-format portraits of the artist
enjoyed a huge worldly success in that European and American international
scene to which Troubetzkoy belonged (...). Being portraited in a small bronze
by the artist, immediately recognizable by his very personal interpretation of
the plastic Lombard 'Scapigliatura' of Cremona or Ranzoni, was an indisputable
sign of worldly consecration” (Patrizia Rosazza Ferraris)
Marble bust “Florentine
Iris” about 1900 by Raffaello Romanelli
(1856/1928) who also sculpted the Monument to
Carlo Alberto in Via del Quirinale
“Ritratto di Emilia Sommi Picenardi” c. 1910
di Emilio Gola (1851/1923)
“Dreams” 1896 by Vittorio Corcos (1859/1933), splendid vision of irresistible charm, a pure but
unknown diamond of the Italian artistic heritage that would deserve great media
exposure
“When this singular, expressive work
appeared, well thought and almost eerie, it sparked a furious noise; in the
alluding title of the subject, one saw the typical image of a modern young
woman, proud and aware, until then only represented in literature, but never in
painting” (Mario Ursino)
“Agriculture”
e “Hunting
and Fishing” two of the eighteen “Panels of the Allegories of the
Arts” executed in 1900 by Paolo Gaidano
(1861/1916)
Room 20 - Avant-garde and modern
life
The Futurist movement in 1909 considered
dynamism and technological change at the center of the artistic interest. The
research of Futurism intertwined and merged with that of Cubism
Five futurist paintings by Giacomo Balla (1871/1958):
“Pessimism
and optimism” 1923, “The
arrows of life” 1928, “Science against obscurantism (Obscurantism and Progress)”
1920, “Transformation
forms-spirits” about 1916/18
They are all works painted after 1913,
corresponding to his Futurist period
Five masterpieces by Umberto Boccioni (1882/1916):
Paintings “Horse
+ Knight + Apartment Block” about 1913/14, “States
of mind-Those who go” 1911, “Plastic
synthesis of a seated figure (Silvia)” about 1915, “Portrait of maestro Ferruccio Busoni” 1916
and extraordinary patinated plaster sculpture “Antigraceful” 1912/13 representing his
mother's face distorted in Futuristic style
“There must be the absolute and complete
abolition of the complete line and of the finished statue. Let's open wide the
figure and let's fit the environment in it... So objects never end and
intersect with endless combinations of sympathy and shock aversion... It is the
idea of interpenetration” (Umberto Boccioni)
“Still
Life with a clarinet, a fan and a bunch of grapes” about 1911 by Georges Braque (1882/1963)
“Conquest of the Air” 1913 by the French Roger de la Fresnaye (1885/1925) one of the founders
of Cubism. Oil on canvas preparatory to the final version in the Museum of
Modern Art in New York
“Le
torniquet du Café de Paris” about 1912 by Ugo
Giannattasio (1888/1958)
“The painter is not an intellectual, but an
instinctive, and the work of art is born from the stomach not from the brain”
(Ugo Giannattasio)
“Lightning” 1910 by Luigi
Russolo (1885/1947)
He theorized the use of noise as music, Rumorism
or noise music. In 1922 he invented the instrument rumorarmonio
to be used in futuristic music. In this painting one can almost hear the
thunder of the explosion, just as the nearby lightning strikes
“Impressions
simultanées (Jeune fille-rue-atmosphère)” about 1912 by Gino Severini (1883/1966)
Two bronze sculptures: “Woman Walking” 1912/20 and “Head”
about 1913 by the Ukrainian Alexander Archipenko
(1887/1964)
“The characteristics of this work (...)
refer to the Cubist study of movement of the human figure. This is confirmed by
the correlation with 'Nu descendant un escalier' of Marcel Duchamp, with whom
the Russian artist along with Georges Braque, Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso
formed the group of the Section d'Or, under whose auspices in 1912 he opened
his first art school” (Livia Velani)
Room 21 - Between vanguard and
tradition
Room dedicated to metaphysical painting
that simultaneously with Futurism gave an artistic interpretation and a reading
of the troubled times before the First World War remaining however tied, unlike
Futurism all projected to the future, to the ancient roots of the past
“The oval of the apparitions” 1918 by Carlo Carrà (1881/1966)
“The oval, which symbolically refers to the
Cubists, feeds the tension toward the perfect spirit to which the objects of
the painting tend to conform, in tune with the contemporary De Chirico's
metaphysical research” (Mariastella Margozzi)
Plaster sculpture “The
sleeper” about 1921 by Arturo Martini
(1889/1947)
“The Daily Automaton” 1930 oil and
collage on board by Enrico Prampolini (1894/1956)
“The Daily Automaton is located in the
moment of transition between the so-called 'mechanical art' derived from
Futurism practiced by the artist in the twenties and the cosmic 'idealism', in
surrealistic style, which characterizes the production of the thirties.
Inspired by Charlot the well-known character of Charlie Chaplin, it is indeed a
surreal image that symbolizes the alienation of the common man in the face of
contemporary achievements of science and technology” (Mariastella Margozzi)
“The
woman in white” about 1911 by Kees van
Dongen (1877/1968)
Sculpture in tuff “Portrait
of the painter Vincenzo Costantini” about 1913 by Roberto Melli (1885/1958)
Plaster sculpture “Tête
qui regarde” 1927 by Alberto Giacometti (1901/66)
“Reclining Nude” 1919 and “Lady
of the collar (Portrait of Hanka Zborowska)” 1917 by Amedeo Modigliani (1884/1920)
“Alone, among the followers of Cubism
fanatical for hieratic works, he was able to give deformations a harmonious
continuity and, with an infallible authority, he was able to take back the line
to its full function, that of Botticelli and Pontormo, especially in his nude
paintings with exquisite undulations” (André Chastel)
“The line, that draws melancholic faces
staring and sometimes absent, tapering in the rigors of form, is accompanied
often by a dense mix and load of color. With the series of nudes painted
between 1916 and 1917 and resumed in 1919 the image exudes a new harmonious
width and has a new intensity more free and sensual. His untimely death will
stop him from concocting his obsessive search for the purity of the lines
through an ancient rhythm and a language fragile yet brutal” (Carlo Bertelli,
Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
“Still
Life with silver plate” 1914, “The
Women Bathers” 1915 and “Still
Life” 1918 by Giorgio Morandi
(1890/1964)
“The only painter who has worked positively
during the metaphysic period is Giorgio Morandi, the most notable among his
contemporaries. He was of austere nature, concise, researcher of pure effects,
almost exclusively painting still lives that have the value for him of subtle
meditation, unique, conversations with the dream and the invisible” (André
Chastel)
“Self
Portrait” 1925, “The
Archeologists” about 1927 and “Hector and Andromache” 1924 by the brilliant Giorgio de Chirico (1888/1978)
“De Chirico, who was a great surrealist
painter and one of the greatest portraitists of all time, changed direction in
the early 1920s, with a sort of afterthought that made him turn especially to
the great classical art of Florence and Venice, and also to Poussin. Later De
Chirico would devote himself entirely to traditional painting, a sort of
polemic against the idea of an artist who must be an innovator at all costs, a
genius who destroys that which preceded him, a sort of bomb that destroys everything
on his way” (Federico Zeri)
“Le Paysage en feu” 1928 by René Magritte (1898/1967) great surrealistic Belgian
painter
“My pictures painted in the years from 1925
to 1936 were the result of a methodical search of a shocking poetic effect
that, obtained by staging objects taken from reality, would give a new poetic
sense to the real world from which these objects were taken, with an
all-natural exchange” (René Magritte)
“Souvenir
d'Enfance a Athènes” 1930/31 and “Crete”
1931/32 by Alberto Savinio (1891/1952), pseudonym of Andrea De Chirico,
Giorgio de Chirico's younger brother
Enormous marble bust “Maestro Arturo Toscanini” 1924 by Adolfo Wildt (1868/1931)
“The politeness of polished marble, yellowed
by the wax coating, according to the custom of Wildt with his own technique, in
particular enhances the hair and bright eyes of Toscanini” (Lidia Velani)
Room 22 - The road to abstraction
“Iridescent
interpenetration” 1912 by Giacomo Balla
(1871/1958)
"Critics have
long debated whether the Compenetrazioni Iridescenti executed by Balla in 1912
in Düsseldorf - and so called much later - were or were not conceived
deliberately as abstract works. Today almost all rule it out, considering them
either studies of the iris or attempts to represent the invisible according to
the Balla’s spiritualist tendencies" (From the sign next to the work
exposed at the GNAM)
“Angular Line” 1930 by Wassili Kandinsky (1866/1944)
“It combines some of the geometric and
symbolic figures that characterize his continue evolution (...) with the
resumption of patterns and vocabulary of the Bauhaus and in general of the
European non-figurative language” (Maria Giuseppina di Monte)
“The mourning of lovers” about 1953 by Joan Mirò (1893/1983)
“In terms of iconography it recalls the
Constellation series, in which the imagery borrowed from literary fairy tales
is interwoven with the interest in the unconscious, whose signs and symbols are
not always easily decoded” (Maria Giuseppina di Monte)
“Inner
Landscape, 10:30 am” 1918 by Julius Evola
(1898/1974). Painter, writer and philosopher linked to the Italian fascist
party
“The objectification of the image is all in
the mind, away from any emotional involvement” (Mariastella Margozzi)
“Yellow
cross Q VII” 1922 by the Hungarian László
Moholy-Nagy (1895/1946)
“Great composition A with black, red, yellow and blue”
1919 by the Dutch Piet Mondrian (1872/1944)
“His initial experience, strongly linked to
a realistic trend will soon be overcome in favor of a more plastic research
tinged with expressionist tones. If the Cubism of Picasso, Leger and Braque
will help him to move away from a subjective view of reality, it would not
certainly be this way of expression to lead the way toward abstraction. In
fact, as the cubists liked the idea of a non-objective representation, they
still remained tied to the forms and volumes of things without breaking the
link between painting and reality. This detachment will take place with
Mondrian with slow and laborious steps and thoughts” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano
Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
“Architectural Feature HO₃” 1926 by Ivo Pannaggi
(1901/81)
“Box-r-bild” 1921 by the German Kurt Schwitters (1887/1948)
“In 1919 Kurt Schwitters created his first
Merzbilder, collage that combined paintings with inserts of words and phrases -
often newspaper clippings - and heterogeneous waste materials found in the
streets and parks of Hannover (...). Based on the concept of total freedom and
randomness in the choice of materials, working on the concept of total work of
art, Schwitters exceeded so the language of traditional painting, creating a
crucial reference point for Dadaist culture” (Sabrina Spinazzè)
“The
Sisters” 1922 by the Bulgarian Nicolaj Diulgheroff
(1901/82)
"It's one of
the few examples of the artist's work before his participation to Futurism in
1926 and it shows a schematic picture of constructivism, due to his attendance
of the Bauhaus in Weimar" (From the sign next to the work exposed at the
GNAM)
“Mechanical Landscape” 1926/27 and “Mechanical
Idol” 1925/26 by Fillia (Luigi Colombo) (1904/36) from the Piedmont region
Founder of the Futurist
Movement and of the Turin Union of Futurist art, he was politically active and
he was not only a painter but also a writer as well as designer of urban spaces
and architectural complexes. He died young at age 31
”Circles”
1916/63 by the Swiss Johannes Itten (1888/1967)
"The original
of 1916 has been lost and Itten remade it in 1963. In the Bauhaus Itten held
from 1919 to 1923 the preliminary training course that helped students to
develop immediate perception and the framing of every experience in a crisp
formal outline" (From the sign next to the work exposed at the GNAM)
”Chorus”
1938 by Carlo Belli (1903/91)
“Memorie d’oltretomba” about 1938 by Osvaldo
Licini (1894/1958)
"In Italy,
the turning point of Abstract Art is enshrined in the first postwar Venice
Biennale in 1948 which will see the participation of artists such as Kandinsky,
Klee, Malevich, Mondrian and others, and will be considered for Italians the
first abstractionist biennial. The title of the work suggests the combination
"geometry-feeling" that Licini researched from 1935 onwards, where
the geometric shapes are combined with references to fantastic images" (Fabiola
Di Fabio)
“La
jarre orange” 1914 by Alberto Magnelli
(1888/1971)
“Under the Red Fish Sign” about 1935 and “Painting”
about 1935 by Atanasio Soldati (1896/1953)
Bronze sculpture “Tripartite Unity” 1958 by the Swiss Max Bill (1908/94)
Room 23 - The war
Collection of paintings about war events
from the Italian “Risorgimento” (“Resurrection” meaning the struggle for the
unification of the country) to the Resistance during World War Two. Some of the
artists on display here, as Filippo Palizzi or Giovanni Fattori, fought during
the Wars of Italian Independence
“Battle of S. Martino” 1880/83 and “Battle of Dogali” 1896 by Michele Cammarano (1835/1920)
His style was inspired by social realism.
In these large paintings he expressed compositions that reveal his innate
theatrical vocation in the family: his father Salvatore was the greatest
dramatist and writer of opera libretti (Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti, Trovatore
by Verdi) in the first half of the nineteenth
“Battle of Custoza” 1880, “Line
of Fire” 1884 and “Military
exercises” 1890 by Giovanni Fattori
(1825/1908)
“Right in that popular dimension, gaunt and
almost schematic which was the style of the large canvas of Custoza, Fattori
proposed a more articulated or, at least apparently, more complex 'national'
definition of a realistic panting” (Raffaele Monti)
“The body of Luciano Manara in S. Maria della Scala in Rome”
1884 by Eleuterio Pagliano (1826/1903)
“The last moments of Carlo Alberto in Oporto”
1884 by Gaetano Previati (1852/1920)
“Previati departs from the canons of history
painting and he represents not the logic of history, but by removing any
conventional narrative mechanism, he shows the human pain and the emotional
reactions of these big losers” (Anna Maria Damigella)
“It stands out from his previous and more
conventional production to embrace the ideals of a new painting style, close to
the issues of European symbolism, in which the light has become a vehicle of
mysticism and religion” (Website of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna -
www.gnam. beniculturali.it)
“Red Shirts” 1898 by Umberto
Coromaldi (1870/1948)
“Landscape
with three rainbows seen from above (Miracle of light flying)” 1932,
“Umbrian
Village” 1932 and “Polyptych of the fascist revolution” 1934 by Gerardo Dottori (1884/1977)
“The whole project develops a propaganda
program through an aerofuturistic style in which the vorticism of the
backgrounds contrasts with the masses of the firm and imposing machines and of
the militaristic hosts” (Mariastella Margozzi)
Painting “Synthetic
Visions of a Landscape” 1933 and sculpture in wood finished in faux
bronze “Soldier
of the fascist revolution” 1934/35 by Renato
di Bosso (Renato Righetti) (1905/1982)
“The
battle of the Admiral Bridge” 1955 by Renato
Guttuso (1911/87)
“War-Party” 1925 by Fortunato
Depero (1892/1960)
"Mastroianni
looks and develops the experiences of futurist plasticity, with particular
reference to Boccioni, and of cubist sculpture, arriving at an idea of the
structure and a treatment of the matter deployed in dynamic forms, violently
fragmented and tense" (Silvia Telmon)
“Minniti,
the legendary hero of Africa” 1936 and “Athena” 1934
by Arturo Martini (1889/1947)
Athena is the only scale model of the
monument five meters placed in 1935 in the Piazzale del Rettorato of La Sapienza University in Rome. Martini himself
attributed to the statue the meaning of incitement to war, perhaps for the
contingency of Italian participation in the Spanish Civil War
Plaster bust of “Garibaldi” 1875 by Ercole
Rosa (1846/94)
“Portrait
of Benedetta Marinetti (Female Landscape of Benedetta Marinetti)”
about 1928 and “Dynamics
of the action (Myths of the action, Mussolini on horseback)” 1939 by
Enrico Prampolini
(1894/1956)
“Aeropainting
of a meeting with the island” 1939 by Benedetta
Marinetti (1897/1977)
“Forms
and cry Long live Italy” 1915, “Pitfalls
of War” 1915, “Interventionist demonstration-flags on the Altar of the
Fatherland” 1915 by Giacomo Balla
(1871/1958)
"His interest
for pure form and in particular for colors resulted in his search for strict
abstraction. He participated in intensely futuristic demonstrations, creating
and interpreting stage actions, drawing clothes, costumes, furniture, designing
plastic figures. His critical position towards the second futurism, latent in
the mid-twenties, was accentuated in the early thirties, leading to isolation
and withdrawal into a search for naturalistic figuration" (Enciclopedia
Treccani)
“Garibaldi's
soldiers - The day before the battle of Volturno (Naples)” 1860, “A
group of Garibaldi's soldier - Portraits (Naples)” 1860, “The
Cavalchina farm, where Prince Amedeo was wounded at the battle of Custoza on
1866 (Custoza)” 1867 and “Two
drummers and a soldier - Grenadiers (Naples)” 1867 by Filippo Palizzi (1818/99)
“Civil War (Martyrs of Piazzale Loreto)” 1944 Aligi Sassu (1912/2000)
The fifteen Italians had been shot in
response to a strange bomb attack two days earlier, August 10, 1944 in Milan
against a German truck. Six Italians passersby were dead and one German soldier
was lightly wounded
The SS Captain Theodor Saewecke who ordered
the shooting died in 2004 at the age of 93 years without ever having spent even
one day in prison. He was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment in 1999
after a rigorous investigation
War crimes like this, unfortunately, were
put under the carpet after the war for reasons of political expediency
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