Da Martini a Guttuso. Una piazza per sei protagonisti del ‘900 italiano
Curated by Casa Testori
With the scientific supervision of Elena Pontiggia
Rimini, Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples 2022, Fiera di Rimini
August 20-25, 2022
From August 20 to 25, 2022, at the Rimini Meeting, Casa Testori presented the exhibition “Da Martini a Guttuso. Una piazza per sei protagonisti del ‘900 italiano.”
How did the great Italian artists bear witness to a passion for man in the dramatic and restless path of the short century? The itinerary proposed by Casa Testori starts from the title of the 2022 edition of the Meeting-“A Passion for Man”-to give a visual representation of it through six great works that document the impetus of an art that managed to stand as a garrison of the human. In a historical season traversed by major ideologies, these artists sometimes start from opposite positions, as in the case of Mario Sironi and Renato Guttuso, one close to Fascism, the other a member of the Communist Party. Yet the differences blur in the consciousness that unites them: the centrality of human presence, with its own aspirations, anxieties and even melancholia. The experience of the twentieth century is marked by the terrible wounds inflicted on the lives of millions of people: it is precisely from this consciousness, assumed in a courageous and radical way, that Leoncillo‘s work is generated, with the series of his “Saint Sebastian.” Marino Marini, on the other hand, in one of his masterpieces, through the leap of the horse that unhorses the rider, gives form to the impetus of the question that burns in the heart of every woman and every man and is the form of the irreducibility of every being. We do not see figures in Titina Maselli‘s great work, which depicts the ride of a subway train: but behind the windows we grasp the poignancy of a thousand presences, grappling with the waits and toils of a very contemporary everyday life. Finally, the great Artuto Martini, in one of the masterpieces of sculpture of the entire 20th century, gives us back the experience that best qualifies the human subject, that of forgiveness, with the embrace between the father and the prodigal son.
The exhibition was under the scientific supervision of Elena Pontiggia, one of the most important connoisseurs of 20th-century Italian art, and the artists were chosen by Casa Testori from private collectors, institutions and important Italian museums.
On Saturday, August 20, Renato Guttuso’s painting “Spes contra Spem” was presented in the presence of Dr. Serena Contini, curator together with Fabio Carapezza Guttuso of the exhibition organized by the City of Varese “The Times of Painting. Chronography of some of Renato Guttuso’s works painted in Velate: the archive of Nino Marcobi” currently underway at Masnago Castle – Varese, and with Davide Dall’Ombra, director of Casa Testori. Click here to watch the video of the meeting.
Posted on: 7 September 2022, by : Casa Testori