VATICAN MUSEUMS - COLLECTION OF RELIGIOUS MODERN ART (second part)

COLLEZIONE D’ARTE RELIGIOSA MODERNA
 

In ROOM XXXII new exhibition of the MATISSE ROOM with “Studies for the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence” 1949 by Henri Matisse (1869/1954)

The Chapel of the Rosary was his last and most important sacred work made in the years 1950/54

“The comparison of the study, kept here, for the image of the Madonna and the work actually executed demonstrates the transition from an initial figure of Byzantine style to one that finds comparisons in Chinese art. Vence's production of is for the master of Cateau Cambrésis, eighty-two at the time, the ultimate goal of a lifetime devoted to the work as he himself wrote in the publication dedicated to the chapel” (Andrea Pomella)

In the Matisse room is also exposed the colossal “Madonna in limestone” by Lucio Fontana (1899/1968)

“Christ in the Garden” by Mario Radice (1898/1987)

Pastel on paper “The Mother” by Umberto Boccioni 1907 (1882/1916)

Two decorated ceramics by Pablo Picasso (1881/1973)

Oil on canvas “El martyrdom de San Esteban” 1944 by José Clemente Orozco (1883/1949)

“He is considered, with Rivera and Siqueiros, one of the most important exponents of Mexican painting. From his early works he showed a tendency to break ties with European art to reconnect to local issues and pre-Columbian Mexico. The Mexican Revolution gave this trend a precise content of a political and social development for his effective and creative power as an artist. His work, dramatic, forceful, full of primal grandeur, found its truest expression in the numerous and monumental frescoes in Mexico City” (Enciclopedia Treccani)

Tempera on canvas “S. Martino” 1941 and “Talk: the disciples” 1936 by Mario Sironi (1885/1961)

“The three figures are imposed on the scene with the monumentality that is typical of megaliths. The matter of the pictorial is raw, unrefined, almost similar to a cave painting. The solemnity is given by the unmoving sense of suspended time that imprisons the characters within a framework of the physical limits of pictorial support” (Andrea Pomella)

“Journey to the Ecumenical Council” by the Colombian Fernando Botero (b. 1932)

Pastel on paper “Assumption” 1925 by Alberto Martini (1876/1954)

Relief in wax “Aetas Aurea” 1886 (copy made after 1895) by Medardo Rosso (1858/1928)

Oil on cardboard “Crucifixion” 1934 by Fausto Pirandello (1899/1975)

“The fall of the angel” 1963 by Marino Marini (1901/80)

Oil on canvas “La danse macabre” 1964 on paper and canvas “Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas” 1948/49 by Gino Severini (1883/1966) study for the Catholic University of Fribourg

Oil on canvas “Kruzifix” 1914 by Max Ernst (1891/1976)

“Important member of the surrealist movement: from the mixture of image and poetic words in the experiments of 'automatic writing' he created his collages and collage-novels (La femme 100 têtes, 1929; Une semaine de bonté, 1934), among the most representative works of Surrealist art. He also produced sculptures (Capricorn, 1948) and objects trouvés and created compositions and fantastic landscapes” (Enciclopedia Treccani)

Oil on canvas “Still Life” 1947 by Alberto Burri (1915/95)

“Crucifixion” 1927 by Gerardo Dottori (1884/1977)

“In 1929, along with Balla, Marinetti, Depero, Prampolini, Luigi Colombo (Fillia), M. Somenzi, Guglielmo Sansoni (Tato), he signed the aeropainting manifesto, inspired in part also by his research on the 'total' landscape. His position in the second futurism was original and detached while Prampolini and Fillia were pushing the research of the group towards a sort of “semi-surrealism”, Dottori remained true to his lyrical and contemplative images, combining the dynamism of the modern vision to the mystical sense of nature, following the pictorial tradition of central Italy “ (Valerio Rivosecchi - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)

“Supper at Emmaus” 1941 by Ardengo Soffici (1879/1964)

Oil on canvas “Still life among bottles, coat and hat” 1946 and oil on canvas “Church Annunziatina in Rome” 1938 by Mario Mafai (1902/65)

“With his wife Antonietta Raphael and Scipio he was one of the creators of the 'Roman School' of painting, which was seen in 1930 as a reaction against the rhetoric of the 'Novecento' (1900s) movement by implementing a tonal painting, emotional and imaginative. After the first expressionistic paintings his style became more balanced with compositions of flowers and landscapes in which light, in the tonal relationships of color, creates forms plastically. That was his more inspired period, yet not without its tensions with the trends of contemporary art, revealing an almost underground controversy in Demolition, a series of paintings that, in the elegiac exaltation of the destroyed old houses, opposed fascist urban planning in Rome” (Enciclopedia Treccani)

Model of the gigantic sculpture (20 m - 66 feet) “Resurrection” 1970/75 for the Paul VI Hall by Pericle Fazzini (1913/87)

It was inaugurated in 1977 and, to put it together, the entire church of S. Lorenzo in Piscibus near St. Peter's Square was made available to the artist

Huge bronze bas-reliefs “The Synod” by Lello Scorzelli (1921/1997)

“The idea of these figures arose from the constant and emotional participation of the artist to the solemn ceremonies of the Council, mingling among the multitude of believers, coming up to the highest hierarchy of the Church and finally also absorbing expressions, gestures and traits of two popes” (from the Editalia publication The Bronzes of the Synod)

Colorful ceramics and “Portrait of Vrania G. (Study of a woman saint)” 1949 by Lucio Fontana (1899/1968)

Oil on canvas “Study for death” 1947 by the American Franklin Watkins (1894/1972)

Tempera on paper “Builders No. 1” 1974 by the American Jacob Lawrence (1917/2000)

“Jacob Lawrence was one of America's greatest 20th Century artists with a spectacular flair for composition and social comment. His brightly colored works are a blend of realism and abstraction and have a kindred spirit with the oeuvres of Stuart Davis and Ben Shahn, but his inventive eye places him with Monet in the pantheon of those artists gifted with infinite riches of compositional creativity” (Carter B. Horsley - www.thecityreview.com)

Colored lithograph on paper “Doves (l'oiseau traversant le nuage)” 1957 by Georges Braque (1882/1963)

“He gave life to Cubism with Picasso and Apollinaire. His activities in the period 1910/14 is characterized by extreme simplification of the figurative elements and compositions, with frequent use of 'collage'. Among the leading exponents of modern art movements, Braque is perhaps the more 'artist', i.e. the one that best knows how to incorporate into a pure formal relations profoundly moving poetry” (Enciclopedia Treccani)

Two similar works in mixed media on canvas paper: “Crucifixion” 1968 and “Crucifixion” tribute to Martin Luther King jr.” 1968 by Mirko (Mirko Basaldella) (1910/69)

Xylography printed on Japanese wooden paper "Old man in prayer" 1902 by Edvard Munch (1863/1944). He represented his father as he saw him coming home after a strong row with him

“The big dark shadow projected on the wall (...) performs the dual function of looming dark otherness and of silent partner. A presence that threats, protects an opens towards an unknown darkness. (...) Between 1897 and 1899 he retreated to Norway and dedicated himself especially to xylography, taking the achievements of Gauguin to the extreme” (Francesca Boschetti - Catalogue of the exhibit Bellezza Divina)

In the collection there are also works by:

Paul Klee (1879/1940), Felice Carena (1879/1966), Giovanni Carnovali (aka il Piccio) (1804/73), Felice Casorati (1883/1963), Henry Moore (1898/1986), Paul Gaugin (1848/1903), Francisco Goya (1746/1828), Giacomo Manzù (1908/91), Luciano Minguzzi (1911/2004), Charles-Edouard Jeanneret aka Le Corbusier (1887/1965), Vasilij Kandinskij (1866/1944), Arturo Martini (1889/1947), Amedeo Modigliani (1884/1920), Giacomo Balla (1871/1958), Emilio Greco (1913/95), Franco Gentilini (1909/81), Carlo Levi (1902/75), Anselmo Bucci (1887/1955), Achille Funi (1890/1972), Giovanni Prini (1877/1958), Umberto Mastroianni (1910/98), Ivan Meštrović (1883/1962), Giuseppe Capogrossi (1900/72), Otto Dix (1891/1969) and Oskar Kokoschka (1886/1980)