From Pellizza to Carrà: the artists from Alessandria who made Italian art history great in the 20th century

The spaces of the Palazzo del Monferrato in Alessandria will host from December 11, 2021 to March 13, 2022 the exhibition Alessandria the Twentieth Century. From Pellizza to Carrà a history of artists, curated by Maria Luisa Caffarelli and Rino Tacchella, together with the scientific committee composed of Fulvio Cervini, Chiara Lanzi, Liliana Rey Varela, Roberto Livraghi and Andrea Rocco, and promoted by the Piedmont Region, Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Alessandria and the Alessandria Chamber of Commerce.

The exhibition aims to recount the contribution that artists born in Alessandria and the province made to the history of Italian art in the 20th century.

The artistic flourishing of the territory, especially in the first half of the 20th century, linked to figures such as Leonardo Bistolfi, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Angelo Morbelli and Carlo Carrà, identifies a kind of genius loci: from the protagonists of the major artistic currents of the 20th century (from Symbolism to Divisionism, Futurism, Metaphysics, and the avant-garde of the 20th century) a vast number of artists actively worked during the century.

Some moved to centers such as Milan, Turin or Rome, others undertook trips to Europe, many continued to make art in their city of origin: all contributed to interpreting the new expressions of art that were emerging, weaving a fruitful network of relationships in the Alexandrian territory.Alessandria and its province can be identified as an “epicenter” of events that deserve to be told through works, both paintings and sculptures, and in the case of Angioletta Firpo, also through the documentation of her performances.

Architecture also played an important role: Marcello Piacentini, Piero Porcinai, Franco Petrucci, Ignazio Gardella, and Paolo Portoghesi. The exhibition layout, designed by Giorgio Annone of Line.Lab, includes multimedia and photographic references and immersive links to artistic movements and its founders and protagonists on this theme.

Finally, mention should be made of Angelo Barabino, Pietro Morando, Anselmo Carrea and Vito Boggeri, far from negligible examples of “outsiders” of unexplored creativity, but of very circumscribed fame precisely because of their introverted and shy personalities.

Thanks to the works made available by the collections of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Alessandria and the Alessandria-Asti Chamber of Commerce, as well as those of private collectors, it is possible through this exhibition to keep the memory of these authors alive and to build a body of iconographic materials that are indispensable for an all-encompassing and as far as possible exhaustive study of the twentieth century in Alessandria.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Line.Lab with the aim of framing the historical economic and cultural context of the twentieth century in the territory of Alexandria and its relations with the national reality.

For info: www.palazzomonferrato.it

Hours: Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 7 p.m. Free admission.

Image: Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Surroundings of Volpedo (1905-1906; Collection Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Alessandria)

From Pellizza to Carrà: the artists from Alessandria who made Italian art history great in the 20th century

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