Alberto Savinio, Les Rois Mages (The Three Wise Men), 1929, Oil on Canvas, Mart, Autonomous Province of Trento Superintendence for Cultural Heritage
Mart Rovereto
Surrealisms
From de Chirico to Gaetano Pesce
12 JULY 2024 – 20 OCTOBER 2024
On the occasion of the centenary of the Surrealist Movement, the Mart dedicates an exhibition to Italian fantastic art, investigating a theme that has long remained in the shadows and is finally at the center of recent studies and rediscoveries. As historiography has repeatedly highlighted, Italy is foreign to the Surrealist Movement, whose invention and maturation took place in France under the guidance of André Breton. Yet we owe to Breton himself the identification of two precious antecedents to the Movement in the work of Giorgio de Chirico and Alberto Savinio.
Starting from these milestones and through episodes that have been considered lateral for too long, the exhibition presents the Italian “surrealisms”: a plurality of individual evidences and branches of original quality and creative autonomy, in constant dialogue with international environments and other fields of culture. In addition to the already mentioned de Chirico and Savinio, 150 works by 70 artists are brought together. An extremely complete catalogue that includes, among others, Leonor Fini, Fabrizio Clerici, Arturo Nathan, Stanislao Lepri, Enrico Colombotto Rosso, Italo Cremona, Gustavo Foppiani, Corrado Costa, Sergio Vacchi, Valerio Miroglio, Giordano Falzoni, Ugo Stepini, Enrico Donati, Adelchi Riccardo Mantovani, Romano Parmeggiani, Lorenzo Alessandri.
Divided into thematic sections, the exhibition traces the main strands of Italian surrealism and their peculiarities, from the open dialogue on the past that has in de Chirico the restless twentieth-century progenitor, to the influences that characterize some expressions of Futurism, of the Pop or post-informal scene, united by the disturbing principles typical of Surrealism, by its vitalism and by its substantial stylistic richness.
The exhibition coexists with the monographic exhibition dedicated to the work of Luigi Serafini, in the same wing of the museum in a space that, from time to time, connects thanks to some gaps. De Chirico, the first modern surrealist, thus passes the baton to many artists until reaching Luigi Serafini, the contemporary Italian fantastic artist capable of attracting around his work a rare group of admirers who, from Italo Calvino to Tim Burton, represent the best creativity of our time.
The exhibition is supported by Altemasi and Cassa Rurale AltoGarda e Rovereto.
From an idea by Vittorio Sgarbi. Edited by Denis Isaia