The exhibition is open until 27 December 2020 in Ferrara, Castello Estense, presents to the public about a hundred works, combining oils, pastels and drawings selected from the vast fund of the Ferrara civic collections with a considerable nucleus loaned from public and private collections, with the support of important unpublished documents.
The exhibition intends to highlight the artist's fundamental role in the renewal of Italian art between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries. Previati is considered an heir to the romantic tradition, an interpreter of symbolist poetics and, due to the visionary and experimental sensitivity of his pointillist painting, an anticipator of futurist avant-garde research.
The unifying trait of such a complex personality is the tension towards overcoming the traditional boundaries of "easel" painting. Fascinated, due to his late romantic training, by large formats and the expression of feelings, he measures himself against some of the crucial challenges artists are confronted with at the dawn of modernity. Representing light, interpreting the suggestions of music, painting rhythm and dynamism, giving shape to moods, soliciting the perceptions of the observer are the watchwords of Previati's research which make him an anticipator of some paths of avant-garde of the twentieth century. Thanks to the support of unpublished studies, this exhibition therefore reinterprets his artistic parable by bringing out some of the most innovative aspects.
A qualifying trait of Previati's art is, like music, the ability to arouse abstract feelings. In 1908 he created the decorative panels for a music room for the house of the gallerist Alberto Grubicy, documented in the exhibition by a photograph. In Castello the juxtaposition of two canvases recognizable in the photo, the panel, is proposed Armonia oSymphony, generously loaned by the Vittoriale degli Italiani, and a small format version of the Notturno. Large drawings, paintings and unpublished materials also document the project of transferring the theatrical impressions into painting, around the Ferrarese story of Ugo and Parisina, highlighting a hitherto underestimated interest.
Another famous love story, that of Paolo and Francesca, stimulates Previati's imagination several times, culminating in the masterpiece of 1909, a real painting of "moods" that dynamically expand beyond the boundaries of the canvas: for this reason the painting is considered one of the matrices of the famous triptych of the Moods by Umberto Boccioni.
The innovative approach of the Ferrarese artist also involves traditional pictorial genres, as evidenced by the section of paintings with a religious theme. As for the landscape, Previati proceeds to strip the scene of details to make room for the joyful expressiveness of color and light. In the monumental Ligurian hills an expanse of meadows dotted with geraniums is, together with the celestial vault, the absolute protagonist of a vision that conveys a sensation of fullness and immensity.
Valuing the new possibilities offered by the publishing industry, with illustrations for i Stories by Edgar Allan Poe and with those for I promise sposi Manzonian, experiments with a new code of illustration that stages the psychological atmospheres and moods of the protagonists of the literary text.
With the cycle of Streets of trade (1914-16) for the Chamber of Commerce of Milan the circle comes full circle: the themes of modernity at the center of the poetics of Marinetti and Boccioni offer new possibilities to the painting of the elderly master. One of the large decorative panels of the cycle, The Pacific Railroad, is exceptionally displayed in the exhibition, accompanied by drawings. It is one of the most fascinating tests of his late maturity, with which Previati demonstrates his ability to move beyond the confines of traditional themes to grapple with the technological and "global" imagination.
Cover image: Gaetano Previati: Ligurian hills, c. 1912-13. Oil on canvas 149 x 198 cm. Private collection
