An exhibition from 1978 goes on display in Rome. With works by Merz, Carrà, Balla, de Pisis, Morandi, de Chirico

From November 29, 2022 to February 26, 2023, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome presents the exhibition Mario Merz. Balla, Carrà, de Chirico, de Pisis, Morandi, Savinio, Severini. Rome 1978, curated by Daniela Lancioni and promoted by Roma Culture and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo. It is part of Mostre in mostra, the exhibition cycle with which the Palazzo delle Esposizioni intends to reconstruct some of the most significant exhibitions that were held in Rome starting in the second half of the 20th century. On this occasion, therefore, the exhibition inaugurated at the historic Galleria dell’Oca in Rome on March 15, 1978, entitled Mario Merz. Balla, Carrà, de Chirico, de Pisis, Morandi, Savinio, Severini, born of the collaboration between Luisa Laureati Briganti, founder of the gallery, and gallery owners Luciano Pistoi and Gian Enzo Sperone. This struck a chord at the time for the juxtaposition of Mario Merz ’s works with the leading Italian painters of the 20th century.

The Palazzo delle Esposizioni wants to repropose it today as an exhibition that succeeded in breaking down stylistic, chronological and ideological barriers, bringing together an interpreter of those Neoavantgardes with the most celebrated artists of Italian painting of the first half of the 20th century. Re-proposing this exhibition today intends to make us reflect on some of the junctures of recent culture, on the fading, in particular, of some rigid compartmentalization that marked the 1970s and on the phenomenon defined as the “return to painting.”

The three works by Mario Merz exhibited in 1978 at the Galleria dell’Oca are on view at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, and to these has been added one that was presented at the same time in the Roman branch of Gian Enzo Sperone’s gallery. Taken together, these works represent a highly significant synthesis of the essential features of Merz’s work and the materials and themes that most frequently appear in his oeuvre: neon, Fibonacci numbers, the igloo, wax, the taxidermied animal, faggots and images painted on unframed canvases. In the Galleria dell’Oca exhibition, Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Filippo de Pisis, Giorgio Morandi, Alberto Savinio, and Gino Severini were all represented with works created during their most happily prolific, some from celebrated collections, such as that of Léonce Rosenberg from whose collection comes Chevaux se cabrant by Giorgio de Chirico, or belonging to important art historians such as Vele nel porto by Carrà still in the Roberto Longhi Foundation in Florence. Many of those same works are on display at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, while those paintings whose current location could not be traced have been replaced with others related in quality and date.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, published with an extensive iconographic apparatus, with contributions not only by the curator but also by Paola Bonani and Francesco Guzzetti, and completed by a chronology, compiled by Giulia Lotti, on the entire activity of the Galleria dell’Oca, from the year of its founding in 1965 until its closure in 2008.

For info: www.palazzoesposizioni.it

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Image: Installation of the exhibition Mario Merz. Balla, Carrà, de Chirico, de Pisis, Morandi, Savinio, Severini. Exhibitions on display, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. Photo © 2022 Azienda Speciale Palaexpo / Monkeys Video Lab

An exhibition from 1978 goes on display in Rome. With works by Merz, Carrà, Balla, de Pisis, Morandi, de Chirico

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