Italian Art exhibition from the 1920s and 1930s
10.5 - 19.8.2018
This Spring I am cooperating to the exhibition "Fantastico" (workshops, lectures, contribution to the biographies section of the catalogue, specialistic guided tours).
This is a great occasion to see shown in Finland masterpieces of the Italian Magic Realism (1920s and 1930s). The artworks are signed by the great names of the Italian art history, although just a few of them are international renown (such as De Chirico, Severini, and Casorati).
Magic Realism was a definition that the critique gave of a widespread artistic tendency in the years between the two World Wars. Already during the First World War, artists were taking distance from the disruptive character of Modernism and began to rediscover figure, volumes, and tridimensional space. Nevertheless the naturalism, common to many artists at the time, did not come as a rational reproduction of nature and figures. These paintings emanated a sense of misery and mystery, of desolation and isolation. they seems to portrait rather a dreamy vision and an ultra terrain dimension (metaphysical) than a material reality.
Despite of the traditional association of the art of these years to the Fascist Regime, it is worth mentioning that while the first example of such modern classicist trend dates to the 1916, Fascism did not even exist before 1919* and its Regime installed in 1922. Novecento italiano, a group of artists which exhibited for the first time together in 1923, was the closest movement to the Regime. Yet, not so much in terms of personal commitment of single artists, but rather as a ambitious plan of the art critic and journalist, Margherita Sarfatti, inspirer and promoter of the group. The group touched the picks of its influential position in 1926, when hundreds of artists exhibited under the same name and roof. However, considering the variety of the aesthetic outcomes presented at the group exhibition, the artists showed to be more concerned with the possibility of an increased visibility than of a personal commitment to aesthetic principles favoured by the political authorities behind the event.
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| Cagnaccio di San Pietro, Money first, https://www.wikiart.org/en/cagnaccio-di-san-pietro |
Still today, visiting the exhibition at the Ateneum in Helsinki, it is possible to see the richness of the fine artistic research that took place in the years of the Magic Realism in Italy.
*Fascio d'azione rivoluzionaria interventista was in fact founded in 1914 by Mussolini. However at the time the movement was mostly interested in promoting the participation of Italy into the First World War. It only involved a relatively small number of members.
FINALE FANTASTICO 18.8.18
12:00–13:00 Ateneum Hall. Art historian Antonella Perna: Felice Casorati’s (1883–1963) work in the context of new realism. A singular position. In English.
14:00–15:00 My favourite works of art: the experts behind the exhibition and the Ateneum staff share their favourites among the pieces in the exhibition. In the exhibition galleries.
– Archive and Library Manager Hanna-Leena Paloposki (in Finnish)
– Museum Guard Laura Paavola (in Finnish)
– Museum Guide Saara Seppälä (in Finnish)
– Art Historian Antonella Perna (in English)
– Museum Guard Laura Paavola (in Finnish)
– Museum Guide Saara Seppälä (in Finnish)
– Art Historian Antonella Perna (in English)
Thu 7 Jun, 17:00 and Sat 11 Aug, 12:00
GUIDED TOUR OF FANTASTICO! IN ITALIANThe art historian Antonella Perna gives a guided tour of the exhibition in Italian. Admission is included in the museum entrance fee or with a Museum Card.
GUIDED TOUR OF FANTASTICO! IN ITALIANThe art historian Antonella Perna gives a guided tour of the exhibition in Italian. Admission is included in the museum entrance fee or with a Museum Card.
Wed 6 Jun, 17:00–18:00 Art historian Antonella Perna: Felice Casorati’s (1883–1963) work in the context of new realism. A singular position. In English.
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