Parma, more than 100 works by major 20th century artists on display from private collections in the city

The Palazzo del Governatore in Parma is hosting until July 21, 2024 the exhibition CONTEMPORARY. Masterpieces from Parma’s Collections, curated by Simona Tosini Pizzetti, organized and produced by Solares Fondazione delle Arti with the support of Destinazione Turistica Emilia. Main sponsor IREN.

Divided into twenty-two sections that follow a chronological progression with alternating focuses on different movements and artists, Contemporanea spans the twentieth century: 115 works by 93 internationally renowned artists, selected from the holdings of Parma’s most important private collections, are on display, with the aim of recounting through paintings, sculptures and rare performance photographs one hundred years of contemporary Italian and European artistic expression. These are works from private collections that are exhibited to the public for the first time.

Thus, the different trends of the 20th century are documented through its major exponents: from Duchamp to Picasso, from Morandi to Casorati via De Chirico, Sironi, Burri, Pistoletto and many other great artists. The exhibition is intended to be at the same time an exceptional look at the twentieth century and collecting.

At Palazzo del Governatore, the exhibition path kicks off with Gli antecedenti, which presents some works of Futurism, and then moves on to Dadaism where the absolute protagonist is Marcel Duchamp, with Fountaine. It then moves on to Surrealism with two rare masterpieces, Giorgio De Chirico’s Le Consolateur and Victor Brauner’s Sans Titre from 1931. Then there is the section The Great International Masters, with Pablo Picasso’s 1962 work Femme sur un fauteuil, a portrait of his second wife, and Marc Chagall with a late 1980 work Le couple davant le peintre. Also featured is Edward Hopper with his 1946 drawing Near Eastham. The exhibition continues with I maestri del Novecento italiano, including Giorgio Morandi’s Natura morta of 1948, Felice Casorati and Filippo De Pisis, Mario Sironi and Atanasio Soldati, considered the leader of Italian geometric abstractionism, and Antonio Ligabue. We then move on to the section The European Informal and CoBrA with Pierre Alechinsky among others, until we reach the room dedicated toInformal in Italy with Alberto Burri and Giuseppe Capogrossi. The section Between Informal and Abstract Expressionism, on the other hand, features works by Conrad Marca-Relli and Georg Baseliz; there is no shortage of a look at geometric abstractionism of a concretist matrix and kinetic art, and Lucio Fontana and Spatialism: the artist is represented in the exhibition by Concetto Spaziale and Attese. This is followed by works from Programmed Kinetic Art through Beyond Spatialism to Abstractism with Fausto Melotti, Piero D’Orazio and Ettore Colla. A separate section is devoted to Fabio Mauri and Pietro Cascella and then to Conceptual Art with Emilio Isgrò.

It continues with Boetti, Mondino and the East to L’arte povera, where works by Janis Kounellis and Michelangelo Pistoletto with the 2007 installation Hunger, made and produced by Solares Fondazione delle Arti, are exhibited. The room precedes those devoted to Pop Art and Body Art, continuing with Transavanguardia with works by Mimmo Paladino and Nicola De Maria, and then, again, I nuovi nuovi, and a focus on the artists of Il pastificio Cerere and the San Lorenzo group that concludes the overview of twentieth-century art preserved by Parma’s major collectors.

Completing the exhibition are projections of two performances by Fabio Mauri: What is Fascism. Feast in honor of General Ernst Von Hussel passing through Rome, 1971 and Ebrea, 1971.

“In recent decades epochal changes have fatally increased the relationship of contemporary art with the world of economics and finance, and the figure of the international collector, often in close contact with the directors of the most important museums, who is even able to condition the processes of valorization of artists, has become more and more established,” the curator pointed out.

Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog published by Dario Cimorelli Editore.

For info: www.contemporanea-parma.it

Hours: Wednesday through Sunday and holidays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Image: Michelangelo Pistoletto, Hunger (2007; Solares Fondazione delle Arti Collection). Photo by Mauro Davoli

Parma, more than 100 works by major 20th century artists on display from private collections in the city

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