The Matteucci Center for Modern Art continues its investigation into the best Italian collections of the past century and since July 20 to November 3, 2013 presents in the Viareggio headquarters the exhibition “Before and after the Roman Secession. Painting in Italy 1900-1935.
The exhibition was conceived and built around a core of works from a refined collection of Italian art between the wars. The review represents a deliberate novelty for the Matteucci Center, hitherto engaged in probing a single collection in each exhibition: in this case instead we wanted to broaden our gaze with respect to the historical period so well represented by that collection and reconstruct, albeit synthetically, a broader picture, retracing with examples of great quality , chosen in a few and selected other private collections, the Italian artistic culture in the years from the Belle Epoque through the Great War, happily feed on the subsequent European climate of the "rappel à l'ordre" and arrive at the results, long removed for ideological reasons , but now recognized in their international value, of the renewed classicism of the XNUMXs and early XNUMXs.
It is composed of three sections: "Under the impulse of the new century", "The climate of the Roman Secessions" and "Return to order. Novecento Italiano and beyond”, entrusted respectively to the care of Ada Masoero, Susanna Ragionieri and Nicoletta Colombo.
È Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo to open the section "Under the impulse of the new century" with The Drowned, 1894, a fundamental work of a path of technical research that would lead him to the very high results of Il quarto Stato and an example of that "humanitarian socialism" that enriches the Italian divisionism of unedited contents compared to French pointillism. The same spirit innervates Lo Scaccino, 1900, by Medardo Rosso (the only sculpture on display) and will inspire many pointillist works by Giacomo Balla. Of which, however, the early Night Scene, Paris, 1900, twin of the one conserved in the Museo del Novecento in Milan, is exhibited here. Some "future futurists" are on display with him Umberto Boccioni, with the portrait of his mother intent on sewing, 1907, a splendid fusain that belonged to Lamberto Vitali; Carlo Carrà, with an early pointillist jewel like The Way Home, 1900, e Gino Severini, with the Portrait of the painter Utter, 1910-1911, a pointillist pastel who, by portraying Suzanne Valadon's young companion, proves, among other things, our artist's participation in the best Parisian artistic environment of the time.
The painting by Aroldo Bonzagni, who was among the first signatories of the Futurist pictorial manifestos of 1910 but who immediately withdrew, while continuing to share the passion for dynamism and speed with his fellow adventurers. With John Costetti (Portrait of Papini, 1903) e Ardengo Soffici (Card Players, 1909), instead we enter the fervid but very different cultural climate of Florence at the beginning of the century, in which the homage to Böcklin and the Renaissance memory of the former is intertwined with the powerful lesson of Cézanne of the latter, fruit of his enthusiastic, first-hand knowledge of impressionism and post-impressionism, approached since 1900 in Paris and then tirelessly promoted in Italy.
The story of the Roman Secessions, four major exhibitions that followed one another in the capital from 1913 to 1916, addressed in the second section, represents a crucial junction in the Italian artistic culture of the early twentieth century. For the first time, and in a more radical way than the Venice Biennale, a direct confrontation with the international presences and languages of the contemporary is underway – first of all French, but also Central European and Nordic ones – destined not only to provoke the necessary and more parts relied on updating, but to lay the foundation for the construction of a modern style.
Born after the futurist explosion to oppose the traditionalism of official art, but in controversy with the Marinettian movement, never present as a group in any of the exhibitions, the Secessions had multiple souls, representing the complex panorama of Italian art in search of a own identity: pointillist, synthesist, Cézannian, expressionist, primitivist. A gallery of works which brings together among others the names of Gino Rossi, Felice Casorati, Armando Spadini, Plinio Nomellini, Lorenzo Viani, Ferruccio Ferrazzi, Felice Carena, well represents the variable temperature of a mobile and under construction language that the tragic caesura of the World War I would have led to the fascinating and controversial outcomes of the following decades.
The section “Return to order. Novecento Italiano and beyond” starts from an early date, 1914, with Birth of Virgilio Guidi and with the historic Cocomero, fruit bowl and bottle by Ardengo Soffici. The post-war years, starting from 1916, introduced in Italy and Europe to the complex climate of the "rappel à l'ordre", widespread since 1919 but already foreseen for five years. The visionary impulse accelerated by the war confirms the common tendency to purify and reconstruct forms, opening up to a modern classic season, the results of which are explored in the exhibition by essential stages: from the pre-metaphysical climate of Marina conchiglie 1916 by Filippo de Pisis, through the synthetic realism of Ardengo Soffici, between 1919 and 1920.
The spatial recomposition and the synthetic values of the new classicism are testified by exemplary works such as Testa di San Giovanni 1921 by Giorgio de Chirico, which brings us back to the atmosphere of “Valori Plastici”; Portrait of Renato Gualino from 1923, which initials the "Magical Realism" by Felice Casorati and from Portrait of his wife 1920 by Piero Marussig, between Jugend and early twentieth century. Works by Achille Funi and Mario Sironi participate in the mature classicism of the Italian twentieth century and Les italiens de Paris, Giorgio de Chirico, Mario Tozzi, Massimo Campigli and Filippo de Pisis, are represented with Parisian themes and still lifes. Finally, the review arrives at the signs of overcoming the Novecento Italiano through the expressionistic suggestions of Ottone Rosai (Houses in the surroundings of Florence, 1932) and Fausto Pirandello, here with a masterpiece such as La scala 1934.
“BEFORE AND AFTER THE ROMAN SECESSION. Painting in Italy 1900-1935”
July 20 – November 3, 2013.
Info: www.centromatteucciartemoderna.it
