The beautiful country. Italy from the Risorgimento to the Great War, from the Macchiaioli to the Futurists, as the title of the exhibition states, in fact intends to restore, through various thematic sections, the representation of the Italian 'landscape' understood in all its aspects, also offering a palimpsest of society and culture from the premises of the Unit to participation in the World War I, whose centenary falls in 2015.
The extraordinary fabric of the Italian geographical and historical reality, made up of intertwining and sedimentation of cultural testimonies where even nature is an expression of anthropization, remains substantially unchanged until the start of the modernization of the country with the transition from a rural economy to industrialization and to its new production processes.
The exhibition will therefore offer a sequence of pictorial documents of the extraordinary Italian landscape beauties, and at the same time cross-sections of daily life as a mirror of different social conditions, in a time of great transformations - political, economic, cultural - represented by the major Italian artists, but also in the eccentric perspective of foreign artists who descended on our country to admire and paint its beauties. A story, also, of different interpretations, in some cases still markedly regionalistic in nature, in others, of linguistic transformations of European scope for a period of time ranging from the painting of the Macchiaioli to the emergence of the Futurist avant-garde.
The exhibition, curated by Claudio Spadoni, opens with a large introductory section with the presence of some of the most famous paintings by Induno, Fattori, Lega, Guaccimanni, dedicated to the Risorgimento epic.
Several other chapters of this journey through time will follow along our peninsula, but also in sequence of expressive models, with paintings by the major artists of the time, such as Fontanesi, Caffi, Lega, Costa, Induno, Bianchi, Avondo, Palizzi, Previati , Segantini: alpine peaks, lake views, the most admired marine landscapes, and glimpses of the most picturesque of the cities celebrated destinations of the Grand Tour, such as Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, in the various declinations of the leading interpreters of the Italian second half of the nineteenth century, as well as foreigners such as Turner, Crane, Corot, Boudin, and several others.
The Bel Paese will then be told, as well as for the intrinsic charm of natural views, in the extraordinary, unmistakable interpenetration of nature and cultural sediment, historical memories, also through evocative images of traditions and customs, thanks to works by figures such as Michetti, Signorini , Lega, Morbelli, with representations of the daily life of a society that is still rural but slowly moving towards industrialization, with artists such as Fattori, Cannicci, Cammarano, Boccioni, to name just a few names.
To give prestige to the many aspects of our country there will be the characterization of characters of different social conditions offered by Lega, Cremona, De Nittis, Boldini, Zandomeneghi. Almost a family album from over a century ago in memory of 'how we were'. In this also the rich section dedicated to photography, practically from the beginning to its progressive affirmation, will have a very important part, with some of its pioneering historians.
The final part will then be a synthesis of these various sections, with works created between the first and second decades of the 900s, which document the divisionist premises clearly grafted onto a European climate, and the advent of Futurism, the avant-garde led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, with artists such as Boccioni, Balla, Depero, Carrà Russolo, determined to wipe out every residue of nineteenth-century culture and sensibility, before the Great War, the true watershed between the two centuries, also deeply marked the continuity and movement utopias.
After the exhibitions dedicated to the figures of great art historians – Roberto Longhi, Francesco Arcangeli, Corrado Ricci, Giovanni Testori – the extensive exhibitions dedicated to the Pre-Raphaelites, to art in Italy after the Second World War (L'Italia s'è desta), and the relationship between Art Brut and the art of the insane (Borderline), the Mar, Art Museum of the City of Ravenna continues its investigation into historical-artistic themes of particular interest, as in the case of the recently concluded exhibition dedicated to the history of detachment of the wall paintings (The enchantment of the fresco).
For the civic, historical and documentary, as well as exquisitely historical-artistic, character, the Museum has forwarded a request that the initiative be placed under the aegis of the High Patronage of the President of the Italian Republic, and that it can enjoy the patronage of the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, of the Emilia-Romagna Region and the Province of Ravenna.
The exhibition is created thanks to the precious support of the Cassa di Risparmio di Ravenna Foundation, aimed at documenting our country and its beauties, in that truly crucial stretch of time, which goes from the Risorgimento epic to the Great War andIt will be accompanied by an extensive catalog with the repertoire of the works on display and several essays that address the complexity of the cultural and social aspects of these dense pages of national history.
