The symbolic building of Ferrara has become the home – temporary but of extraordinary charm – of the remarkable art collections of the Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries of Palazzo Massari, unusable after the 2012 earthquake.
The forerunners of this exhibition cycle were Boldini and De Pisis, both present in the civic collections in a broad way and with testimonies of absolute importance.
In the coming months, an important nucleus of Boldini's works will fly to China where, at the World Art Museum in Beijing, the first retrospective in that great country will be dedicated to him. This will coincide with the dismantling of the Boldini section in the Castello, a renovation already planned, given that the L'arte per l'arte project conceived by Maria Luisa Pacelli, director of the Modern Art Galleries, envisaged a succession of exhibitions in the Castello.
Again drawing on the public collections in Ferrara, the spaces that now house Boldini will host a selection of works by other protagonists of art in Ferrara between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, in particular Gaetano Previati and Giuseppe Mentessi. The itinerary dedicated to Filippo de Pisis will remain unchanged.
«This is yet another opportunity – affirms Tiziano Tagliani, Mayor of Ferrara – to admire the heritage of the Galleries of Palazzo Massari. The intent is to continue to keep the museums alive, despite the closure of their premises for restoration, and to offer a new opportunity to visit the Estense Castle".
«The 2016 edition of Arte per l'arte opens with a glimpse of Italian art between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, focusing attention on the contribution of artists from Ferrara», anticipates Maria Luisa Pacelli.
In the richly decorated halls of the main floor of the Castle, the exhibition The freedom of art will be developed. Between truth and imagination, proposing a brief but interesting journey through some of the different orientations which, towards the end of the XNUMXth century, competed to renew the conventional languages of art: from the poetics of truth to the art of ideas, from scrub painting to divisionism, from the representation of modern life to the decorative suggestions of Liberty. Among the protagonists are Ferrarese artists active on the Italian scene, such as Giuseppe Mentessi, Alberto Pisa or Arrigo Minerbi, and, alongside them, figures of international stature such as Giovanni Boldini and Gaetano Previati, who was an interpreter of divisionism and the symbolist vague. The layout will be developed in thematic rooms that recall the main motifs of research at the turn of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries: the modern portrait and its new codes, the historical-allegorical themes and the monumental and decorative dimension, the new subjects of modernity, the landscape reality and the landscape of the soul, the moral and spiritual tensions on the eve of the great war.
The itinerary then continues in the casket of the Camerini di Alfonso I, where the selection of masterpieces by Filippo de Pisis is displayed, which tells the artistic parable of another Ferrarese talent, active on the Italian and Parisian stage since the XNUMXs. The very rich Ferrarese collection of works by Depisis, built above all thanks to the activity of the Pianori Foundation and the generous bequest of Manlio and Franca Malabotta, allows us to revisit his entire creative path. From his early works, which reveal De Pisis's reflection on his encounter with De Chirico and metaphysical painting, to the masterpieces of his Parisian period that mark the birth of a personal language, a pictorial transcription of the burning emotions that the Ville lumière procures for the painter, up to the production following his return to Italy, extreme results in which the poetry of the images is stripped down to the essentials.
