An exhibition on Mario Ceroli in Milan and Rome: this is the first fruit of the collaboration between GNAM in Rome and Brera

The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome and the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan have signed an agreement for the mutual enhancement of their historical-artistic heritages. The collaboration will allow the two institutions to jointly develop projects of study, promotion, scientific research and produce shared exhibition events. This agreement takes on particular relevance in light of the upcoming opening of Palazzo Citterio in Milan, which will house Brera’s collection of modern and contemporary art.

The support of Banca Ifis has made this partnership possible, ensuring a long-term commitment between the two institutions aimed at mutually enhancing their respective artistic heritages and sharing exhibition projects. A first fruit of the collaboration will be the exhibition dedicated to Mario Ceroli, which will take place at the Stirling Room of Palazzo Citterio starting next December, with asite-specific installation by the artist. The exhibition will then move to Rome in the spring of 2025, where it will be expanded with an anthological selection of Ceroli’s works, set up in the rooms of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art.

“The agreement with the Pinacoteca di Brera, like those already made with the Musei Reali in Turin and the Gallerie dell’Umbria, is important, especially in a global cultural landscape in which international museums are growing every day, increasing their collections and exhibiting them in more venues,” explains Cristina Mazzantini, director of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea. “This agreement, will allow Gnam and Brera to join forces and resources to articulate an interesting program of exhibitions, starting with the one on Mario Ceroli, creating an ideal cultural bridge between Rome and Milan. Ceroli is one of the ”new masters“ of Italian art: a unique artist, albeit already a leading exponent of Arte Povera and the Pop season. This exhibition celebrates his extraordinary career, pervaded by a constant search for wonder. I thank Ernesto Fürstenberg Fassio for the great sensitivity with which he supported one of the greatest protagonists of Italian contemporary art and Banca Ifis for making his exhibition possible.”

“I believe it is incumbent on the autonomous state museums to collaborate, overseen by the new valorization department, having as a goal the creation of a strong system of relationships and joint planning. Because of the upcoming opening of Palazzo Citterio, the collaboration with the National Gallery is essential and a point of pride for us. And the exhibition dedicated to Mario Ceroli a first test case for which we must thank the support of Banca Ifis,” added Angelo Crespi, director general of the Pinacoteca di Brera and Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense.

“We wanted to support this project that unites Rome and Milan to show our closeness to the world of art and culture. In this way, we are flanking two of the most prestigious Italian institutions in the sign of the public-private collaboration that distinguishes Banca Ifis’s intervention in art and in all the other sectors in which it operates, from the economy to the social sphere,” said Ernesto Fürstenberg Fassio, president of Banca Ifis. “This intervention takes place through ”Ifis art,“ the brand I personally designed to promote the enhancement of Italy’s artistic and cultural heritage. It is a container that is continually enriched with new projects such as the one we are presenting on this occasion: an exhibition dedicated to Mario Ceroli, first in Milan at Palazzo Citterio and then in Rome at Gnam. This is a unique opportunity that for the second stage of this itinerant journey will see an increase in the number of works chosen from Mario’s collection in the wake of an open dialogue with our Bank, which will aim to bring to life his account of art in the most prestigious national and international contexts.”

The exhibition dedicated to Mario Ceroli, curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, represents an important opportunity to reflect on the artist’s entire research path: a new chapter in his creative journey started, with a strong identity, from the second half of the 1950s, maintaining a constant focus on both forms and processes. In Milan, in the Stirling Room of Palazzo Citterio, the exhibition will feature some five works and installations, including the monumental Venice. This central work is composed of dozens of elements, pine trunks from the garden of Ceroli’s Roman home, cut down due to a turtle mealybug attack that resulted in his untimely death.

The installation serves as an autobiographical tribute to the city of Venice, which has played a crucial role in Ceroli’s career since his participation in the 1966 Biennale, and as a reflection on the beauty and human ingenuity that characterize the lagoon city. In the Stirling Room with the grandeur and awe that emanates following the iconography of a “wooden Stonehenge,” an immersive eco-mythology of that extraordinary attention paid to nature, to its complexity, by the world’s diverse traditions throughout history, up to the industrial revolution, will be celebrated. Ceroli, who has worked with a wide variety of materials from marble to ice as well as water, glass, sand, colored earths, cloth, ash, in nearly seventy years of uninterrupted research, confirms wood as his accomplice of choice, the same with which he began his itinerary in sculpture, winning the National Gallery of Modern Art’s prize as early as 1957 with a piece consisting of logs and nails.

“The Venice installation is a further attestation of the artist’s faith in man, nature and the regenerative force of the global artifice-ecosystem alliance; it is his monument to that unprecedented vision of a supportive and sustainable society that can be defined as ’new planetary humanism,’ in the meaning proposed in 2005 by the writer and intellectual Ernesto Balducci,” says Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, curator of the exhibition.

“Trees are life, and they look a lot like man, his physical structure,” the artist often reminds. His is always a work for the community, useful, it is the intervention of art and culture that must enter the streets, communities, “because in the houses it is not needed.”

After the Milan stop at Palazzo Citterio, Mario Ceroli’s exhibition will move to the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, where it will be enriched by other works.

An exhibition on Mario Ceroli in Milan and Rome: this is the first fruit of the collaboration between GNAM in Rome and Brera

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