Ca' Pesaro collection enriched with Sironi-StrauÃ?wald donation

From March 11, the permanent collection of Ca’ Pesaro Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna in Venice will be enriched by a fundamental nucleus of drawings by Mario Sironi, which arrived at the museum venue thanks to the Sironi-Straußwald donation.

The latter offers, exhibited to the public in good part for the first time after careful conservation and assembly work, the precious drawings related to themural work Sironi created in 1936-1937 in theAula Magna of the University of Venice at Ca’ Foscari, entitled Venice, Italy and Studies, the only excellent example of Sironi’s great season of mural painting in the lagoon city. Alongside the drawings, Sironi’s masterpieces already part of the Ca’ Pesaro museum collections are also on display.

Around the 1930s, the artist devoted himself almost entirely to monumental works. The fresco Venice, Italy and Studies in the Aula Magna (now Aula Baratto) of Ca’ Foscari is a significant example of this, although today it shows blurred and barely legible after damage derived largely from a fire in 1979. The mural work features, from the left, the figure of the fascist university man with book and musket, a female figure leaning on a bundle that, due to the presence of the cogwheels, was wanted to be identified with Technique, another female figure at a caduceus, a probable personification of Medicine, the seated figure of Venice with a panel representing Ca’ Foscari, the Basilica of San Marco with the going lion, and finally the depiction of Italy holding a broken chain. Numerous other elements and inscriptions complete the iconography.

“Among the favorite authors of art critic Margherita Sarfatti and at the center of the artistic renewal that developed with the Novecento italiano group, Sironi around the 1930s identified,” recalls Elisabetta Barisoni, Head of Ca’ Pesaro, “mural art as a new challenge for the creativity and prestige of Italian production. Tackled not only as a technical issue, muralism is Sironi’s renewed way to recall the soul and sense of antiquity and make art a public thing, marked by collective enjoyment, monumental elements and eternal themes.”

“A great example of Sironi’s mural season, Italy, Venice and the Studies for Ca’ Foscari emerges from the precious papers of the Sironi-Straußwald donation, which constitute a corpus of fundamental quality and importance for appreciating the artist’s creative process and his ability as a skilled draughtsman. The sketches, sketches, compositions and individual figures offer a unique opportunity for reflection, not only because of the dialogue they open with Sironi’s other works preserved in the Museum but also because of their intimate connection with Venetian visual history,” says MUVE Foundation President Mariacristina Gribaudi.

“Ca’ Pesaro is the recipient of important legacies. Those presented here are testimony to that. They confirm not only the prestige of this Institution and our Museums but also their ability to enhance the legacies, both through exhibitions, such as these, dedicated to them, and by putting the works entrusted to us on a Venetian but also international circuit,” concludes Mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro.

Ca' Pesaro collection enriched with Sironi-Straußwald donation

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