Italian artists of the 20th century
Museo Novecento hosts a lot of Italian masterpieces of the 20th century, works that are able to communicate the great stages of the 20th century art and to lead the audience to better understand the news and the advancements that have revolutionized visual arts over the century. After a successful first series, the Florentine Civic Museums and MUS.E Association propose also for 2017 a series of conferences dedicated to the protagonists of the museum, in order to recall their artistic events and offer support for understanding their works. A conference a month dedicated to a different artist will be curated by Mus.e Mediation Department. The conferences will be held in the Atlana of Museo Novecento. The participation is free (it does not include access to the museum), and booking is mandatory. Here follows the agenda.
Sunday, February 12 – 3pm: Felice Casorati
Born in Novara, he has amused himself with painting and music since he was little, and after his Master’s degree in Law Felice Casorati (1883-1963) decides to dedicate his life to art. His poetic world is enhanced with classic elements, perfect and silent, static and composed, clear and defined as many great masters of Tuscan Renaissance.“It is not important how we love things, when we actually love them”. “And I felt I was truly in love with them: it was essential not to betray this love anymore…”.
Sunday, March 12 – 3pm: Ketty La Rocca
Born in La Spezia, Ketty La Rocca soon moves to Florence and places herself among the Visual Poetry artists over the 60s and 70s, sharing their interest in criticizing a consumerist society, always close to irony. Her attention particularly focuses on the original and spontaneous gesture, which is considered the zero degree of communication as a language to rediscover in the current media era.
Sunday, April 9 – 3pm: Arturo Martini
Born in Treviso, Arturo Martini is one of the most influential figure of 20th century Italian sculpture. His works with their soft and compact shapes feature an archaic flavor, even though they remain far from the classical magniloquence recovered by the Fascist regime. “For two years I have studied Etruscan sculpture, and for five I have reproduced it. I am the real Etruscan…”.
Sunday, May 14 – 3pm: Mario Mafai e Antonietta Raphael
Husband and wife, Mafai and Raphael develop from their apartment in via Cavour in Rome their intimate and tonal vision of the eternal city between the two World Wars. From their sunset-light views to their still-life in which every object communicates their life as a couple, their production is definitely at the antipodes of the official art of the regime. “[…] at that time I was thinking about the idea of the ordinary man […] I thought that the nature of things appeared blurred and deformed by an excess of value that men was attributing to themselves while presuming to rebuild the world”.
Sunday, September 17 – 3pm: Mirko Basaldella
Second-born of a family of artists from Udine, Mirko Basaldella devotes his life to an experimental and mixed-media sculpture. Even though his essential and primordial subjects (Totem, Idolo) come from an ancestral past, they are still based on present topics which are communal to the whole humankind.
Sunday, October 15 – 3pm: Carlo Carrà
Born in Alessandria, Carlo Carrà is one of the first artists to join Futurism, living his youth between Italy and Paris in close contact with the European avant-guard art movements. The dramatic events of the First World War lead him back to the “order” as many artists of that time: Carrà discovers Giotto and Piero della Francesca together with the Italian traditional painting of the 4th and 5th century.
Sunday, November 12 – 3pm: Filippo De Pisis
Born in Ferrara, Filippo De Pisis is a painter, a poet, an actor and a critic, an eclectic figure of the Italian art of the early 20th century. In Paris, where he lives for most of his life, De Pisis has the chance to deeply experience impressionism works that are crucial for his painting outputs, such as his still-life paintings, which according to the writer Aldo Palazzeschi are truly Surrealism masterpieces.
Sunday, December 17 – 3pm: Ottone Rosai
As an authentic Florentine artist, Ottone Rosai approaches to art joining Futurism, even if he quits the Avant-guard art movements to develop a very personal poetics that is linked to the modest and suffered daily life of his home town. The narrow streets and dark corners of the Oltrarno area, lived by wayfarers, workers and pensioners become the undisputed protagonists of his paintings.
Conferences curated by Valentina Zucchi and Elisabetta Stumpo.
Info and booking:
+39 055-2768224; +39 055-2768558
Mail info@muse.comune.fi.it