Trapani, Pepoli Regional Museum acquires two works by Renato Guttuso

Trapani ’s Pepoli Regional Museum is preparing to welcome two new contemporary works of significant artistic value. On Friday, May 3, at 5 p.m. in the museum’s conference room, two recently acquired autograph canvases by Renato Guttuso (Bagheria, 1911 - Rome, 1987) will be officially presented to the public.

The works were donated by Michelangela Scalabrino, a retired professor from the Catholic University of Milan, who wanted to pay tribute to the museum in her family’s hometown. The professor’s father, a doctor, had received these paintings as a gift from the famous Bagheria painter himself: as a child, Scalabrino spent her summer vacations in Trapani, and now she wishes to share these works with the community.

The first painting, entitled Peasant Riding a Donkey and made in 1954, represents a study for a large oil painting entitled The Occupation of Fallow Lands. The theme, dear to the master, expresses the social realism that characterizes many of his works. The second canvas, called Peasant Woman and dated 1956, depicts a woman with a large bundle on her head proceeding with sacred solemnity within a barren, rocky landscape. Both works depict the epic of the humble, the toil of hard daily labor faced with dignity and composure.

These two canvases, now part of the museum’s permanent collection, will be displayed in the picture gallery, in the room dedicated to works from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This exhibition renovation will allow visitors to fully appreciate Guttuso’s art and immerse themselves in the history and culture of Sicily through his masterpieces. Guttuso’s two canvases will be displayed inside the room that previously housed Giacomo Balla’s famous Portrait of Nunzio Nasi.

In addition, the exhibition layout of the room will undergo a remodeling to make room for the return to fruition of the bronze Head of an Old Man by Palermo-born Domenico Trentacoste. This work, which has long remained in museum storage, is an expression of the humanitarian socialism that characterized the work of many intellectuals and artists in the late 19th century. In the same space, a marble bas-relief depicting a Female Figure, a work by Trapani sculptor Domenico Li Muli, created in the second half of the 1930s, will also be placed. This new arrangement will allow visitors to appreciate a variety of works representing different facets of Sicilian and Italian art of past centuries.

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Trapani, Pepoli Regional Museum acquires two works by Renato Guttuso

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