Leoncillo's relationship with antiquity in an exhibition at Florence's Museo Novecento

Opening to the public on Dec. 3 at the Museo Novecento in Florence is the exhibition Leoncillo. The Ancient dedicated to the Umbrian sculptor (Spoleto, 1915 - Rome, 1968) and his great interest in the ancient, rereading his plastic creations in the light of his relationship with the art of the past. On view until May 1, 2022, the exhibition is curated by Martina Corgnati and Enrico Mascelloni with the artistic direction of Sergio Risaliti and is organized by MUS.E; it is the first exhibition in an Italian museum to investigate the profound relationships Leoncillo Leonardi had with the ancient, archaic and classical, as well as with the masters of the Renaissance and Baroque, during his 30-year activity, from 1938 to 1968. On display among others are the three glazed polychrome terracottas known as the Monsters, hybrid creatures inspired by the classical world made in the late 1930s: the Siren, theHermaphrodite and theHarpy, close to coeval examples of the Roman school, particularly Scipio. The three works testify to “the originality of invention” and “the vitality of expressionistic and baroque deformation” that began to emerge in Leoncillo, as the painter Virgilio Guzzi stated. Two examples of the Caryatids from the war years follow, the first probably from 1942 and another from 1945, along with lesser-known works such as Table and Figure Running. The selection of chosen works also allows us to dwell on the artist’s gaze to the past, ranging from the Greek world to Hellenism to the Renaissance; a diffuse interest that does not bother to distinguish between the classical original and the Renaissance interpretation, but considers them both as returns to the same human drama.

In the postcubist season, interest in the ancient remains alive, although forced to coexist with the spatial organization influenced by the Picasso of Guernica. These years are represented in the exhibition by Portrait of Mary and in particular by the dramatic Partisan with Tied Hands, a work that was considered lost and now reappears in Leoncillo’s catalog. On the other hand, exhibited here for the first time in a museum is the 1957 panel, a sketch for a monumental work made in Faenza, which anticipates the paratactic structure, i.e., developed horizontally by looking at late Roman sarcophagi typical of the later panels, such as Night’s Tale II.

Of the horizontal sculptures, perhaps the best-known example, Vento rosso (Red Wind ) of 1958, characterized by the violent and nervous modeling of his later production, is on view in the exhibition. Of all Leoncillo’s works, it is this extensive cycle spanning a five-year period that highlights the influence of Roman statuary. Several “vertical” sculptures also alternate, represented in the exhibition by a white Sebastian and a red Taglio, preceded in the vertical extension by a 1957 work, Colonna.

The works on display, about thirty sculptures, panels and papers, are intended to highlight the continuity of gaze that runs through all his work: from the hybrid and monstrous beings of 1939 to the last decade in which the experience of matter triumphs, through the neo-Cubist season (1946-1955), Leoncillo never renounces articulating an intimate and challenging confrontation with the great past of sculpture, not only to restore dignity to ceramics, but implicitly placing himself on the same plane as the masters and artistic civilizations that preceded him when faced with the same privileged subject, man, and the same drama, namely suffering and death. Direct evidence of this is the presence of one of Leoncillo’s most famous works among the rooms of the Archaeological Museum, among ancient Etruscan sarcophagi. Indeed, on display at the National Archaeological Museum is Ancient Lovers (1965), which refers avowedly, in its form and spatial organization of matter, to the Etruscan Sarcophagus of the Bride and Groom, preserved in the Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia in Rome. The Etruscan motif is defined around the relationship between a double vertical element (the raised busts of the bride and groom) and a single elongated horizontal body (the legs of the figures and the triclinium. The research focuses on the relationship between horizontal and vertical bodies, an issue that had deeply interested Leoncillo for years and is here recognized in a plastic and thematic solution (love and death) invented by anonymous Etruscan sculptors millennia earlier.

“After the exhibitions dedicated to Medardo Rosso and Arturo Martini, and given the presence in our permanent collection of no less than three ceramics by Lucio Fontana, we could only focus our attention on Leoncillo, one of the great masters of the twentieth century, an artist who with courageous experimentation held firm the relationship between humanistic and archaic art, opening up to the new languages of the contemporary new possibilities unprecedented expressive possibilities, which have been an inspiration to the new generations of Arte Povera and beyond,” saysSergio Risaliti, director of the Museo Novecento. “A very complex exhibition from the organizational point of view that required more than two years of scientific preparation. I would like to thank the curators, Martina Corgnati and Enrico Mascelloni, among the top experts in the field who have dedicated their specific and passionate expertise to this appointment. We are pursuing a precise cultural and scientific project with these dialogues between ancient and contemporary, for an articulated expansion of knowledge and rediscovery of connections between worlds only seemingly distant in time and space. The revival of themes, forms, iconographies goes far beyond suggestions or superficial quotations when great artists dialogue as equals. All history resonates with the present, and there is only art that speaks to people’s minds and hearts. Therefore, I thank the Regional Museums of Tuscany Director Stefano Casciu and MAF Director Mario Iozzo for understanding and sharing these principles, adding with us a valuable new piece to this journey.”

Special guided tours and in-depth meetings coordinated by Museo Novecento and organized by MUS.E. will be provided during the exhibition’s opening period.

For info: www.museonovecento.it

Pictured, Leoncillo early 1960s. Courtesy of Galleria dello Scudo, Verona.

Leoncillo's relationship with antiquity in an exhibition at Florence's Museo Novecento

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