In Ferrara an exhibition on Alceo Dossena and the great forgers of the 20th century

After this winter’s exhibition at the Mart in Rovereto, the largest exhibition ever on Alceo Dossena (Cremona, 1878 - Rome, 1937), the works of the legendary Cremonese forger are returning to the forefront of an exhibition: it is Fakes, il falso nell’arte, scheduled from April 7 to July 31, 2022 in Ferrara, at Palazzo Bonacossi.

It will be an exhibition with free admission structured on a path that will start from Alceo Dossena, the author who lived between the 19th and 20th centuries and created masterpieces attributed to the great masters of the past and also ended up in many collections and museums abroad, arriving all the way to the fake Modigliani, with reference to the hoax of 1984, when two heads were found in the royal ditch of Livorno that were mistakenly attributed to the most famous artist of the Tuscan city whose birth centenary was running that year. On that occasion the current president of Ferrara Arte, Vittorio Sgarbi, creator of the exhibition (and who will lend several works, from the Cavallini Sgarbi Foundation), along with Mario Spagnol, expressed doubts about the originality of the works. In his presentation of the exhibition, Sgarbi emphasizes how this affair highlights that “critics must make their own pronouncements, questioning even technical assessments. This is the principle on which the primacy of criticism is affirmed.”

The exhibition, they let the Ferrara Arte Foundation know, will be different from the one in Rovereto: there will be no works from the state collections and the Dossena nucleus preserved at the Museo Civico in Pescia, but there will be a section devoted to “neo-eastern” art, which will document, through a group of sculptures, the activity of forgers and copyists from the Po Valley who operated in the Ferrara area between the 19th and 20th centuries. In all, about 90 works will be on display: at the center of the exhibition is the theme of forgery in art through the masterpieces of Alceo Dossena formidable creator of sculptures in the Greek and Etruscan styles and of the greatest Italian masters of the 14th century and Renaissance, Giovanni Bastianini, the most celebrated sculptor-forger of the nineteenth century, of works made in protest by sculptor Angelo Froglia and in jest by Pietro Luridiana, Pier Francesco Ferrucci and Michele Ghelarducci, authors in 1984 of the mockery of the heads attributed to Amedeo Modigliani. The sculptural works will also dialogue with a small but valuable nucleus of paintings by Icilio Federico Joni and Umberto Giunti, who specialized in gold-backed panels that trace the style of the Sienese Primitives.

“What we are going to open at Bonacossi,” says Cultural Councillor Marco Gulinelli, “will be a curious and compelling journey among cases of striking forgeries and twists and turns. There are those who, like Sainte-Beuve, went so far as to say that ’I find the last word in art in forgery.’ Without going so far as to arrive at such tranchant and perhaps debatable considerations, there is no doubt that the history of art has been traversed by cases of ’excellent’ forgers and equally ’excellent’ false attributions that have marked the history of art itself by revealing, as in the case of Dossena, an obvious ’talent’ even in the hand of certain copiers and forgers.”

The exhibition, as anticipated, will be free access with opening to the public on Thursdays and Fridays from 3 to 6:30 p.m., and on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., except for additional special openings that may also be considered to coincide with special initiatives or holidays.

In Ferrara an exhibition on Alceo Dossena and the great forgers of the 20th century

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