In Domodossola a major exhibition on women in art from Boldini to Picasso

The Gian Giacomo Galletti Civic Museums in Palazzo San Francesco in Domodossola are hosting a major new exhibition dedicated to the role of women between the last years of the 19th century and the early 20th century from July 15 to December 11, 2022.

In the Sign of Women. Between Boldini, Sironi and Picasso, this is the title of the exhibition curated by Antonio D’Amico and Federico Troletti and realized by the Municipality of Domodossola in partnership with the Paola Angela Ruminelli Foundation and the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum in Milan, the contribution of the CARIPLO Foundation and the support of Soc. Coop. Pediacoop, Ultravox Srl and Studio Abc, Sos Dyslexia Center of Domodossola. The exhibition benefits from prestigious loans and the collaboration of the Matteucci Institute. Following the exhibitions De Chirico De Pisis. The Mind Elsewhere and Balla Boccioni Depero. Constructing the Space of the Future, the decades between the end of the 19th century and the first forty years of the 20th century are now investigated through the eyes of the artists who were able to grasp the role of women in society, projecting themselves into modernity.

The exhibition will offer a rich path of dialogues between paintings, sculptures, photographs, period cameras and clothes, which will start with some masterpieces by Giovanni Boldini and continue with a space dedicated to Queen Margherita, and will then dwell on the woman painted by artists such as Zandomeneghi, Mario Cavaglieri, Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Vittorio Amedeo Corcos, Giacomo Grosso, Cesare Maggi, Carrà, Pellizza da Volpedo, up to Sironi, Modigliani and Picasso.

More than sixty works will be exhibited to investigate the interconnections between the various manifestations of modernity, always placing at the center of the research the city of Domodossola, which in these decades was a living protagonist of the times. In 1906, in fact, the Simplon Tunnel was inaugurated, which opened a direct route of communication with France and consequently with Paris. A lively and international atmosphere prevailed in Domodossola, where the Galletti Theater hosted the cinematograph and prose and opera performances that attracted audiences from all over the Lake Maggiore area, where the Marchesa Casati stayed, and where Umberto Boccioni, Arturo Toscanini, Daniele Ranzoni and Paolo Troubetzkoy, among others, met, placing the town in connection with the modern capitals of Europe.

After more than four months of restoration work, theoriginal curtain of the Galletti Theater painted in 1882 by Bernardino Bonardi, an Ossola native and set designer for the National Theater in Madrid, will be on display with a depiction of the Market Square, filled with everyday scenes and characters dressed in the traditional costumes of the Ossola valleys. Present in the theater until the 1920s, the curtain was then in storage for the past four decades.

Domodossola of the early twentieth century also comes alive again through the words of the poet Giovanni Pascoli, whose autograph writings are displayed: Pascoli had personally worked to raise useful funds for the construction of a hospice for emigrants in Domodossola, and when it was inaugurated in 1906 by Queen Margherita and Msgr. G. Bonomelli, the poet sent an epigraph that was placed on the facade of the building.

The exhibition itinerary aims to bring out the female figure, the woman in her different facets who becomes the key to understanding modernity. Women are present in the works of Boldini, Zandomeneghi, Cavaglieri, Corcos, Carrà, Pellizza da Volpedo and Sironi-sometimes intellectuals, others workers, young or old, mothers or daughters. These figures bear witness to evolving times and changing aesthetic tastes, from the tulle and crinoline portraits of the late nineteenth century we find them again between the 1920s and 1940s represented by Sironi as solid figures stripped of tinsel and with a strong, melancholic mark in Picasso’s Le Corsage a Carreaux.

Also investigated are the changes in society’s taste and sensibility as it shifts from country life to the city, a mirror of innovation and modernity, elements that can be traced in Leonardo Dudrevuille’s large intimate “tale,” a masterpiece of considerable size owned by the Fondazione Cariplo, in Italo Nunes Vais’s poignant greeting of a mother to her daughter, and in Picasso’s Cubist vision.

Particular importance is given to fashion with the sumptuous train cloak worn by Queen Margaret, displayed in an arrangement that places the cloak in dialogue with the portrait of the ruler, accessories of the time and photographs.

The exhibition is intended to be a reflection on the figure of the artist as such: it is the artist who, with the particular sensitivity of his or her gaze, notices changes in society and becomes a witness to the becoming of modernity.

“This exhibition is an opportunity to savor beauty. The exhibition path is intended to immerse the visitor in a world governed by aesthetic pleasure, so that the eye of contemporary man is also involved and overwhelmed by the search for beauty, true nourishment for the mind as well,” said Federico Troletti, curator of the Civic Museums of Domodossola. “The exhibition brings to dialogue with the great also lesser-known artists, with unpublished works, thus proposing new strands of research. I am grateful to Antonio D’Amico who wanted to share this primordial exhibition project of his with a group of researchers. Among them are Elena Pontiggia and Stefano Bosi, expert connoisseurs of the period who offer insights into the big names in the exhibition; Silvia Malaguzzi, who with a cross-sectional survey of the works outlines the evolution and use of jewelry; and Paola Caretti, who with unpublished studies offers a socio-historical reading that obliterates the gap between periphery and center. This is an exhibition that dares, creates suggestions, traces a path of research, stimulates curiosity and leads the visitor, like the curators, to reflect on the effects of art on society and society on the manifestations of human creativity.”

Hours: Until Oct. 9, Thursday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 7 p.m.; from Oct. 11, Thursday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 to 6 p.m.

Closures or special openings will be announced on the Palazzo San Francesco’s Facebook and Instagram pages.

Image: Vittorio Amedeo Corcos, Portrait of Anita Vollert de’ Ghislanzoni and Maddalena Parodi, detail (Fondazione Istituto dei Ciechi di Milano “Museo Louis Braile”)

In Domodossola a major exhibition on women in art from Boldini to Picasso

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