An exhibition in Bagnacavallo on avant-garde graphic design from Manet to Picasso

From September 22, 2024 to January 12, 2025, the Bagnacavallo Museo Civico delle Cappuccine hosts the exhibition The Sign Revolution. The Graphics of the Avant-Garde from Manet to Picasso, curated by Davide Caroli and Martina Elisa Piacente, with the collaboration of Marco Fagioli, promoted by the Municipality of Bagnacavallo and organized by the Museo Civico delle Cappuccine. A review dedicated to the human landscape with which the programming centered on the theme of landscape that has characterized the last three years of the museum’s exhibition offerings comes to a close.

European art, eager for new stimuli and influences, began a transformation that marked its evolution, focusing on the depiction of man in a historical era characterized by great changes between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The artistic revolution between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries irreversibly changed artistic languages, a symptom and consequence of the search for a new sense of self and the construction of a new worldview. The exhibition aims to trace this path of profound revision of the self and the representation of reality through the mutations of signs in the art of engraving. Starting with some graphics by Francisco Goya and a very rare xylographic matrix by Gustave Doré, it moves through the iconic and ironic line of Honoré Daumier to the little-known Impressionist graphics with works by Manet, Renoir and Degas. The tour continues with post-Impressionists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Vlaminck, Gauguin, Cezanne and Bonnard.

In a period of such artistic fervor, many movements were born and artists joined together to support each other in their attempts to assert new expressions: from German Expressionism with Ensor, Grosz, Kirchner, Kokoschka, Kollwitz, Masereel, Nolde, Pechstein, Schiele, to Symbolism by Redon and Alberto Martini; from Abstractionism by Kandinsky and Klee to Surrealism by Ernst, Man Ray, Magritte, Dali, and Picabia.

There is no shortage of the experiences of those authors who are difficult to circumscribe in defined movements: the Italians Arturo Martini, de Chirico, Morandi, Wildt, Boccioni, Marini, Manzù, Carrà, Campigli and the Europeans Chagall, Rouault, Giacometti, Léger. Special attention is given to the work of Picasso.

Alongside nearly one hundred works on loose sheets, several publications that contributed to the rapid spread of the new prints will also be on display: artist’s books, such as those made entirely by Matisse, or magazines and volumes with lithographs by artists considered the greatest innovators of the graphic sign of the time. Through the analysis of the works of some of the most important artists of the last two centuries, the exhibition traces the fundamental stages of human history that have transformed the conception of the artist’s craft and the purposes of art itself. From a more academic dimension there has been a shift to a more intimate and personal one, which makes these works still contemporary and close to our sensibility.

The exhibition, realized thanks to the valuable collaboration of various museums, loans from collectors and the support of MIXER S.p.A. and Edison Stoccaggio S.p.A., is accompanied by a catalog that includes photographs of all the works on display. During the exhibition, events will be organized to explore different aspects of the culture between the two centuries examined, as well as workshops dedicated to engraving techniques.

For info: www.museocivicobagnacavallo.it

Hours: Tuesday and Wednesday from 2:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.; Thursday from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.; Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. From Sept. 26 to 28, on the occasion of the Feast of St. Michael, extended hours from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday, September 29, extended hours from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Nov. 1, Dec. 8, Dec. 26 and Jan. 6 open 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Mondays, Dec. 25 and Jan. 1.
Free admission

An exhibition in Bagnacavallo on avant-garde graphic design from Manet to Picasso

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