The exhibition Moods. Art and psyche between Previati and Boccioni aims to take a fresh look at Italian art at the end of the XNUMXth century. In fact, the exhibition will investigate for the first time the poetics of states of mind and with it one of the fundamental contributions of our country to modern art. Manifest paintings such as Ave Maria a trasbordo by Giovanni Segantini, Maternità by Gaetano Previati, the triptych of States of mind by Umberto Boccioni and other important works of Italian and international art between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, lead visitors on a journey through the territories of the spirit.
It is a decisive moment for the advent of modernity which sees science and art engaged as never before in the investigation of the psyche, and artists in the challenge of creating a new visual alphabet capable of bringing into the work the mutable and elusive matter of moods. Among them are the protagonists of the artistic scene of the time, from the masters of symbolism and divisionism, such as Segantini, Previati, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Angelo Morbelli, to an original sculptor such as Medardo Rosso, up to the leaders of the futurist avant-garde, Balla , Carrà and above all Boccioni, who knew how to pick up the baton from the previous generation and create a disruptive language that places "the viewer in the center of the picture", to drag him into the dynamics of emotions and into the polyphony of the modern metropolis.
In this project Gaetano Previati, leading artist of the collections of the Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries of Ferrara, occupies a very special place: as Boccioni himself stated «with him the forms begin to speak like music, the bodies aspire to become atmosphere, spirit and the subject is already ready to transform itself into a state of mind». The exhibition was born from the desire to explore and highlight the fundamental role played by the Ferrarese artist in creating a bridge between the legacy of the nineteenth century and the artistic avant-gardes of the new century.
The exhibition States of mind. Art and psyche between Previati and Boccioni is the result of a work of excavation of sources and critical revision conducted by the curators of the exhibition and by a scientific committee made up of internationally renowned scholars, supported by the authoritative specialists who collaborate on the catalogue. Thanks to the support of major European and American museums and private collectors, it has been possible to obtain exceptional loans, from Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti from the National Galleries of Scotland to Fugit Amor from the Musée Rodin, from Pellizzi's Memory of a Sorrow from the Accademia Carrara to Boccioni's Laughter coming from the MoMA, and achieve the ambitious goal of re-reading that crucial turn of the century from an unprecedented point of view.
The installation, curated by Studio Ravalli, which had already successfully designed the one created for the exhibition dedicated to Orlando furioso, plays an important role in the story of the exhibition: it was in fact designed to create a suspended and immaterial space immersed in the dark, in order to enhance the suggestive power of paintings and sculptures, and favor their direct relationship with the observer. In this rarefied container, the narration arises from the visual short circuit between the exhibited works and images, sounds, films that photograph the fin de siècle climate, between positivism and irrationalism.
Key works of the Italian and international scene between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries will dialogue with the "interferences" offered by the scientific and cultural imagination of the time in a thematic story that crosses states of mind: from melancholy to abandonment in reverie, from the abyss of fear to the liberation of sexual drives and aggressive instincts, up to the ecstatic rapture of love and the sublimation in feelings of peace and universal harmony, to close on the frenetic and exhilarating notes produced by the experience of the contemporary city.
The exhibition is open from 3 March to 10 June – Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti
Image: Umberto Boccioni: Laughter, 1911 Oil on canvas, 110,2 x 145,4 cm New York, Museum of Modern Art. Gift of Herbert and Nannette Rothschild, 1959
