The hot autumn of the Trento and Rovereto MART, from Isadora Duncan to the Bernardo Strozzi-Yves Klein comparison

A hot autumn, that of the Mart - Museum of Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, under the banner of exhibitions, events, conferences, focuses, and meetings. The president of the Mart, Vittorio Sgarbi, presented the autumn calendar of exhibitions, from September 20 to November 22, 2019: there are twelve events that the institute has organized. The program is titled, in fact, Hot Autumn, and was conceived by the museum’s director, Gianfranco Maraniello, together with Vittorio Sgarbi and the museum’s board of directors composed of Silvio Cattani, vice president, and Dalia Macii, board member. The goal of the schedule is to make the Mart more pop and attractive to the general public, with large exhibitions, small cameos, moments of in-depth study, days of celebration and appointments for all kinds of audiences: families, young people, specialists, enthusiasts. As always, the proposal will be centered on modern and contemporary art, but there will be no lack of bold comparisons with the past and moments of scientific popularization. Fundamental will be the collaborations with great international and Italian museums, but also with institutions and realities of the territory involved in the programming of events.

The key exhibition of the fall will be the one dedicated to the dancer Isadora Duncan (San Francisco, 1877 - Nice, 1927), whom Sgarbi called “a figure with a formidable charge, a legendary and universal human story that will certainly attract a large audience.” The exhibition will open to the public on Oct. 19 and will feature masterpieces dedicated to this revolutionary figure of dance, muse of the greatest innovators in the pictorial and plastic arts of the early 20th century such as Rodin, Stuck, Boccioni, Depero, Casorati, and Giò Ponti. The exhibition, entitled Dancing the Revolution. Isadora Duncan and the figurative arts in Italy between the 19th century and the avant-garde, is curated by a scientific committee composed of Maria Flora Giubilei and Carlo Sisi, with Rossella Campana, Eleonora Barbara Nomellini and Patrizia Veroli. The exhibition is the same one that was presented in spring in Florence, at Palazzo Bardini, and at the Mart it also finds space as a continuation of one of the museum’s most successful projects, the 2004 exhibition La danza delle avanguardie, which investigated the relationships between dance and the visual arts of the 20th century.

Central to the exhibition proposal will also be the comparison of different periods. At the Mart, great art has always crossed historiographical frontiers and hierarchies, and this year it does so by offering juxtapositions that aim to foster the recognition of historical realities, the comparison of canons and paradigms that is the basis of art education. It begins on October 4 with the first focus devoted to the co-presence between the significant figuration of Gino Rossi (Venice, 1884 - Treviso, 1947) and the sculptural synthesis of Arturo Martini (Treviso, 1889 - Milan, 1947). From Oct. 25 an unprecedented comparison and will cross the centuries with the exhibition at the Mart of an altarpiece by Bernardo Strozzi (Genoa, 1581 - Venice, 1644), depicting the Madonna and Child Jesus in Glory and Saints (ca. 1640), in parallel with one of the greatest artists of the 20th century: Yves Klein (Nice, 1928 - Paris, 1962). At the center of the investigation is the blue. On the one hand the holiness allegorically alluded to by the color of the drapery, on the other hand Klein’s well-known version and its bearing on overcoming the material condition of existence. Explained Sgarbi: “That of contemporary art is an aesthetic concept, it is a theme we think about and rethink. We have been saying for years that all art is contemporary. We compare everything with the contemporary because sometimes the ancient is more modern than the contemporary. Now we stop saying that and work on it! That’s what I want to do at the Mart: look for affinities.”

As for contemporary art, the largest anthological exhibition ever held in Europe on Richard Artschwager (Washington, DC, 1923 - 2013) opens Oct. 12. The exhibition is the result of an international collaboration with the Guggenheim in Bilbao, a museum that becomes a partner of the Mart and that historically and in many ways has perhaps been a model for its historical analogies: post-industrial contexts rethought in the perspective of a cultural impetus guaranteed by the urbanistic reinterpretation of museum institutions designed by archistars. Curated by Germano Celant, the exhibition will be presented first in Rovereto, from October 12 to February 2, 2020, and then hosted in Bilbao in spring 2020. It is a journey through the work of an artist who rethought the object and space of art: the exhibition will feature masterpieces coming to Rovereto thanks to generous loans from some of the world’s leading collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Broad Art Foundation (Los Angeles), Tate Britain (London), Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (Paris), and Fondazione Prada (Milan).

Completing the exhibition season at the Rovereto venue is the Intermedia project, produced together with Museion in Bolzano, with which the Mart shares projects referring to the research of the Archivio di Nuova Scrittura. A double exhibition, set up from Nov. 23 in both venues, encourages the study and enhancement of a heritage entrusted to the institutions by collector Paolo Della Grazia. TheHot Fall also includes proposals from the Mart’s other venues. At the Galleria Civica in Trento, artist Gianni Pellegrini presents his most recent production and some site-specific works. From Sept. 21, the exhibition gives an account of the unceasing and continuous commitment of one of the protagonists of the Trentino cultural world, confirming the vocation of the Galleria Civica to support the quality of the cultural events of the territory. In Rovereto, the Casa d’Arte Futurista Fortunato Depero, the only museum founded by a Futurist on the basis of a visionary and prophetic project of a total work of art, is enriched this fall by an exhibition that investigates one of the key themes of Futurism: the dimension of sound. From November 9, it will in fact be possible to visit the exhibition Tuuumultum! Samples between art, music and noise from the Mart Collections.

For all info you can visit the Mart website.

Pictured: Plinio Nomellini, Isadora Duncan, right side of the painting Gioia tirrena, detail (1914; “Villa San Martino Picture Gallery,” Silvio Berlusconi Collection)

The hot autumn of the Trento and Rovereto MART, from Isadora Duncan to the Bernardo Strozzi-Yves Klein comparison

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