The Reality Painters also come to Asiago exhibition

From June 28 to October 1, 2023, Le Carceri Museum in Asiago is hosting the exhibition The Painters of Reality. Between Ancient and Modern, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi with Beatrice Avanzi and Daniela Ferrari, promoted by the Municipality of Asiago and Asiago Turismo, in collaboration with the Mart in Rovereto. The organization is entrusted to Maggioli Cultura.

The exhibition aims to reread a particular season of postwar Italian art through more than seventy pictorial works, bringing attention back to the Modern Painters of Reality, a group of artists who debuted in 1947 by lashing out against the outcomes of modernism to defend and recover the great pictorial tradition from Caravaggio to Spanish and Flemish painting. The group is represented in its entirety in the exhibition: there are in fact works by Gregorio Sciltian, Pietro Annigoni, Xavier and Antonio Bueno, along with Alfredo Serri, Giovanni Acci and Carlo Guarnieri who joined the group later.

The exhibition is completed by two masterpieces by Giorgio de Chirico, the father of metaphysics who established esteemed relationships with all four “Modern Painters of Reality.” Also presented, in comparison with the moderns, are works by ancient artists, mainly from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nurtured by the Caravaggesque temperament first and Baroque later, a source of inspiration and model for the four signers of the manifesto.

“A festival. It was the last festival of Italian painting. The Modern Painters of Reality, with a belligerent programmatic manifesto, addressed the issue by establishing a ’resistance’ front. Aesthetic and ethical, before political,” explained Vittorio Sgarbi. “They adhered with conviction, participating in the five exhibitions in which their communal experience was consummated, between 1947 and 1949. Their inspiration was Caravaggio, the value of composition and that ’return to the craft’ theorized by Giorgio de Chirico.”

What the Modern Reality Painters have in common is the desire for a rebirth of painting that corresponds to a parallel rebirth of humanity after the destruction, deprivation and suffering of the recent world conflict. The manifesto accompanying the first exhibition in 1947 reads, “We recreate the art of the illusion of reality, the eternal and most ancient seed of the figurative arts. We do not lend ourselves to any return, we simply continue to carry out the mission of true painting. [...] Well before we met, each of us had deeply felt the need to search in nature for the common thread that would allow us to find ourselves in the labyrinth of schools that have multiplied in the last half century.”

The Asiago exhibition makes it possible to further research the careers of individual artists and reconstruct their significant parabola in the history of 20th century Italian art. The Modern Painters of Reality lashed out harshly against the decadent artistic expressions of many of their contemporaries. They countered these languages with an evocation of ancient and higher stylistic models from the past. Despite declaring intentions of fraternity, universality and neutrality, beyond assertions about an art within the reach of all, the Painters betrayed a polemical attitude that seemed to disapprove of at least half a century of painting, and that struggled to find theoretical correspondence in the socio-cultural context of the time. The art world marginalized and harshly rejected their instances, which were not totally understood and considered radical.

The exhibition is divided into six sections. The first section is dedicated to Pietro Annigoni, who oriented his research on the primacy of drawing according to the model of the Tuscan school, with a personal challenge to the artists of the past. The most representative work in the exhibition, besides a magnificent Tempest from 1939, is the autograph copy of the Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II made with his pupil Romano Stefanelli. The second section delves instead into Gregorio Sciltian. The Russian-born artist arrived in Italy in the early 1920s and made his debut with a solo exhibition at the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia in Rome (1925) presented in the catalog by Roberto Longhi. The critic recognized in his painting echoes of Caravaggio and a meticulous rendering of detail reminiscent of that of Flemish and Spanish still lifes: important references for the young artist, who had already admired Caravaggio’s Madonna of the Rosary during his studies in Vienna after leaving Russia following the October Revolution. Sciltian is part of that process of rediscovery of Caravaggio’s painting that began in 1922 with the Exhibition of Italian Painting of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, held at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. His still lif es become, over time, increasingly crowded with objects and rich in detail, with a trompe-l’oeil effect that achieves the “illusion of reality” pursued by the artist.

We then move on to the section on the Bueno brothers, who arrived in Florence in January 1940 for a study trip and remained there due to Italy’s entry into the war. The talent and mastery of painting techniques of the two Spanish brothers did not go unnoticed and soon their work was appreciated by Gregorio Sciltian and Giorgio de Chirico. The fourth section is The Modern Painters of Reality 1947-1949. The research of the four signers of the Manifesto accompanying their first exhibition converges in their brief adventure. The fifth, Metaphysical Atmospheres: the Relationship with Giorgio de Chirico, delves into the relationship of the Modern Painters of Reality with Giorgio de Chirico, the father of Metaphysics, whose two works are in the exhibition. The sixth section, New Realities. The Temptations of Modernity, explores the different and autonomous aesthetic paths taken by the artists, with distant and diverse outcomes, all of extraordinary quality. Within the sections, works by early artists, mainly from the 17th and 18th centuries, nurtured first by the Caravaggesque temperament and then by the Baroque, taken as the source of inspiration and model of the four signatories of the manifesto, bearers of the desire for a rebirth of painting that corresponds to a parallel rebirth of humanity after the destruction, deprivation and suffering of the recent world conflict, are presented in comparison with moderns. These artists include the so-called Master of Hartford, Giuseppe Recco, two other outstanding works, initially given by Zeri to Caravaggio, now attributed to the so-called Pensionante del Saraceni, from a private collection, and Carlo Magini with works from the collection of the Fondazione della Cassa di Risparmio di Fano.

Hours: Daily from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 to 7 p.m.; Saturday until 9:30 p.m.

Image: Antonio Bueno, Nude with Flowers (1947; oil on canvas panel; Fiesole, Antonio Bueno Heirs Collection)

The Reality Painters also come to Asiago exhibition

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