Rome, Palazzo Merulana dedicates exhibition to Antonio Donghi, exponent of magic realism in Italy

From February 9 to May 26, 2024 Palazzo Merulana hosts the exhibition Antonio Donghi. The Magic of Silence, curated by Fabio Benzi and produced by CoopCulture. Main sponsor UniCredit, which also contributed sixteen important loans of Donghi’s works from the collection on display at Palazzo De Carolis. The exhibition is also realized with the contribution of Lazio Region L.R. 24/2019, Annual Plan 2023 for Activities and Modernization - Museums and the free patronage of Roma Capitale.

The exhibition is dedicated to Antonio Donghi, one of the leading exponents of magic realism in Italy, and aims to present the artist’s entire career, touching on all the main themes, through works from the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, the National Gallery of Modern Art, the Bank of Italy, the UniCredit collection (formerly of the Bank of Rome) and the Elena and Claudio Cerasi Foundation. Only three paintings(Pollarola, Portrait of Lauro De Bosis, Annunciata), linked in different ways to the Elena and Claudio Cerasi collection, were included in the exhibition outside the core of public collections. Landscapes, still lifes, portraits, figures in interiors and exteriors, circus and avant-garde characters: these are the themes addressed in the exhibition.

On display will be more than thirty works mainly purchased directly at the major exhibitions of the time, such as the Venice Biennials and the Rome Quadrennials, or found on the market.

The exhibition is an in-depth study of one of the main pictorial nuclei represented in the Elena and Claudio Cerasi Foundation, which owns and permanently exhibits three of Donghi’s masterpieces, Lavandaie (1922-23), Gita in barca (1934), Piccoli saltimbanchi (1938).

The aim of the exhibition is to re-meditate the role, method, and aspirations of this closed and difficult artist, but at the same time the creator of works that are unique and impressive for their suspended atmosphere, for the density of questions he poses to the viewer even in the seemingly naked reality in which the anonymous protagonists of the paintings are presented. To his revisiting we want to add not only a study of his extremely eclectic cultural sources, but also focus on the important role that some Roman public collections played in the knowledge and dissemination of his art.

For info: https://www.palazzomerulana.it/

Rome, Palazzo Merulana dedicates exhibition to Antonio Donghi, exponent of magic realism in Italy

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