Three major exhibitions open at the weekend across Italy from north to south, with post-impressionism in Verona, Paul Klee in Nuoro on the island of Sardinia, and the post-Caravaggio work of the young 'Calabrian knight' Mattia Preti on display in Rome.
In Verona the post-impressionist movement is told through
the works on loan from the splendid Dutch collection of the
Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo.
In Nuoro, 'Animated Worlds' shows 50 extraordinary works by
Paul Klee at the MAN art museum.
And in Rome, through January 18, works by Mattia Preti are
on display in Palazzo Corsini's National Gallery of Ancient Art
alongside important works by Caravaggio and Ribera that provided
his inspiration.
Verona - About 70 works, among which figure 10 by Van Gogh
selected from the Kroller-Muller Museum collection in Otterlo,
recount the crucial development of European art between the 19th
and 20th centuries.
The exhibition titled 'Seurat-Van Gogh-Mondrian.
Post-impressionism in Europe' opened Wednesday and will run
through March 13 in the spaces of the Palazzo della Gran
Guardia.
The show documents the extraordinary adventure of colour
that characterised the painting trends and new techniques that
were preparing to radically transform the concept of art in the
Old World.
Among the most passionate of the post-impressionist art
collectors was Helene Kroller-Muller, wife of a wealthy Dutch
industrialist, who collected works of undisputed masters.
Above all the collection shows Van Gogh in his brief,
dramatic years spent in France, where he managed to instill
unprecedented drama in his brush strokes.
In the unfolding of these few decades, this was also the
premise that brought forth the radical revolution of abstraction
captured by another Dutch genius, Piet Mondrian.
Among the masterworks on display are 'Sunday at
Port-en-Bessin' by Seurat, 'Breakfast' by Paul Signac, Van
Gogh's 'The Sower' and 'Landscape with Wheat Sheaves and Rising
Moon', Mondrian's 'Composition No. II', 'Composition in Colour
B', 'Composition with Grid 5: Lozenge, composition with colours'
and 'Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue'.
Nuoro - Around 50 works that include paintings, watercolors
and sketches tell the extremely personal vision of Paul Klee's
world in an exhibition on display from October 30 through
February 14 in the spaces of the MAN museum.
The show is an extraordinary occasion to go deeper into
certain under-investigated aspects of the poetics and expressive
research of one of the most complex and original masters of
19th-century European art.
Titled 'Paul Klee. Animated Worlds', the show explores a
fundamental element in the production of German abstract art
with Swiss origins: the perception of the presence of a vital
principle.
His work, in fact, appears to have been permeated by an
animated spirit, seen in all of physical reality and evoked by
the same creative action by the artist.
This vision seems to manifest itself in many of the
master's works, such as 'Feigenbaum (Fig Tree)', 'Im Park (In
the Park)', 'Wohin?(Where?)', 'Hier der bestellte Wagen! (Here's
the Cart Requested!), 'Getrubtes' (Disturbed)', 'Gebarde eines
Antlitzes (Expressions of a Face)', and 'Figurale Blatter
(Figured Leaves)'.
Rome - Through January 18, around 20 paintings in the
splendid painting gallery of Palazzo Corsini tell the story of
the youth of 'Calabrian knight' Mattia Preti.
The selection allows for a reconstruction of a
still-obscure period during the long and acclaimed career of the
painter who took his first steps in the Rome of Caravaggio.
Titled 'Mattia Preti: A Youth in Rome After Caravaggio',
the show aims to reproduce the results of Preti's final years of
study, by placing his works in close comparison with those from
the National Gallery of Ancient Art (above all Caravaggio's
'Saint John the Baptist'), also inspired by the tricentennial of
his death.
Among the works on display in the gallery of Palazzo
Corsini are 'Soldier', 'Sinite Parvulos', two versions of
'Tribute Money', the 'Denial of St. Peter', 'Fleeing Troy', and
the 'Miracle of Saint Pantaleon'.
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