The ”Italia Quotidiana” exhibition is made up of sixty-five works, including paintings (45) and sculptures (20), belonging to the collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art; they are not part of the recently reorganized exhibition itinerary, but have been preserved for years, sometimes decades, in its Deposits. This is an exhibition of exceptional value, which brings to the attention of the general public works by important and significant Italian artists, which for reasons of both space and reiteration of the themes have not found a place in the rooms of the building in viale delle Belle Arti .
Created by over forty artists, they are placed chronologically in a time span that goes from the 1920s to the late 1940s and highlight the path of Italian art from the moment of re-elaboration of classically derived themes and stylistic figures to the period of maturation of the figurative language ”modern” of the 1930s, often identified with the aesthetic canons of the twentieth century, reaching a more or less evident contrast with these and therefore an opening towards other research, aimed at the expressiveness of content and form.
The painting is presented by sections and types such as Still Life , The figure , The landscape And The portrait . The common thread is the feeling of everyday life in the artistic panorama of the period which emerges from the choice of anti-rhetorical and anti-heroic works which interpret, in all facets of the artistic environment from the 1920s to the end of the 1940s, the life and reality of Italy of the time.
The last section dedicated to Sculpture as reality and as transformation , presents a series of truly extraordinary and little-known works that retrace the salient phases of the art of the period between return to order, mannerist forms, twentieth centuryism and anti-twentieth centuryism.
From Giacomo Balla to Filippo De Pisis, from Libero Andreotti to Nino Franchina, passing through Giorgio de Chirico, Mario Mafai, Pericle Fazzini, Giacomo Manzù, Marino Mazzacurati, Fausto Pirandello and Antonietta Raphaël Mafai, the history of the figurative culture of a The era that wanted to portray everyday life and reality with attention and grace, recording those family and social values ​​of dedication and feeling that were considered an integral part of the Italian spirit of that period.
Furthermore, this overview offers the opportunity to reflect on the motivations and methods of acquisition of the works by the most important Italian museum institution responsible for contemporary art, the National Gallery of Rome. They largely propose the stylistic and content values ​​that the State wanted to propose to public enjoyment in order to direct its taste. They therefore represent an interesting choice often within important exhibition events, such as the Venetian Biennials and the Rome Quadrennials, and also record the epochal transition between the direction of the Gallery by Roberto Papini, coinciding with the years of fascism and of the war, and that, from 1941 onwards, of Palma Bucarelli.
Artists of lesser fame, but not of lesser caliber, are also represented in the exhibition, who contribute significantly to a more in-depth knowledge of the very lively artistic panorama that characterizes these two decades of Italian life; among them: Antonio Biggi, Quirino Ruggeri, Amedeo Bocchi, Alfredo Biagini, Pasquarosa Bertoletti, Bruno Saetti, Emilio Sobrero, Alberto Salietti. Also among the works, including four De Chirico works never exhibited before.
Among the most significant works are: The friends And Portrait of Isa by Giorgio De Chirico, The queue for the lamb And The four of us in the mirror by Giacomo Balla, Brandano the fisherman And Forgiveness by Libero Andreotti, Still life with pipe and books And Flowers by Filippo De Pisis, Seated man by Pericle Fazzini, Asparagus by Achille Funi, Dried flowers by Mario Mafai, Woman combing her hair by Giacomo Manzù, Portrait of Alfonso Gatto by Marino Mazzacurati, Objects And Roofs by Fausto Pirandello, Bacchus at the tavern by Gregorio Sciltian.
By Mariastella Margozzi, head of the 20th century collections at GNAM, Rome
The exhibition is placed under the High Patronage of the President of the Republic and has received the patronage of the President of the Chamber of Deputies.
