Monza: the exhibition “From Renoir to Picasso, from Miró to Fontana. 120 masterpieces of 900th-century graphics”, from 28 September 2024 to 23 February 2025
The exhibition investigates the European art scene between the end of the nineteenth century and the post-war period, through the graphic works of its greatest interpreters.
Monza: the exhibition “From Renoir to Picasso, from Miró to Fontana. 120 masterpieces of 900th-century graphics”, from 28 September 2024 to 23 February 2025
From 28 September 2024 to 23 February 2025, The Orangery, Royal Palace of Monza hosts an exhibition that takes visitors to the heart of one of the most dynamic and fertile periods in the history of art of the last two hundred years, guided by the greatest Italian and international masters.
The review, entitled From Renoir to Picasso, from Miró to Fontana. 120 masterpieces of 900th-century graphics, edited by Simona Bartolena with Enrico Sesana e Luigi Table, produced and created by ViDi cultural, in collaboration with the Consorzio Villa Reale e Parco di Monza, with the patronage of the Municipality of Monza, with the contribution of Bper Banca and travel partner Trenord, investigates the European artistic scene between the end of the nineteenth century and the post-war period through the graphic works of its greatest protagonists, from Henri Toulouse-Lautrec to Paul Cézanne, from Pablo Picasso to Vasilij Kandinskij, from Marc Chagall to Joan Miró, from Alberto Giacometti to Jean Dubuffet, from Alberto Burri to Lucio Fontana, to others still.
“The exhibition that the Royal Villa of Monza is preparing to host – declares Arianna Bettin, Councilor for Culture, Park, Villa Reale, University of the Municipality of Monza – stands out for the in-depth study of a specific technique, reread and interpreted through the art of great interpreters of the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Artists who – although distant in affiliation and school – have measured themselves with graphics according to their own very personal creative method, laying the foundations for the important development that took place in the following decades. A path of certain interest that we hope will reawaken the interest of many visitors”.
“With great pleasure – he states Bartholomew Corsini, general director of the Consorzio Villa Reale e Parco di Monza – we are hosting this exhibition at the Orangerie of the Villa Reale, which traces a path through the history of art of the last 150 years through the printed works of its greatest interpreters. All the names that animate the exhibition, it is enough to remember Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Vasilij Kandinskij, Marc Chagall, Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti and Lucio Fontana, are undisputed protagonists of the world scene. Exhibiting a selection of their graphic works here is a way to strengthen the internationalization process that we are working on with urgency. The Reggia di Monza is a “magical” place, through which a large part of European history has passed, with the Habsburgs first and the French after, as well as national, cosmopolitan also in artistic language, impossible not to remember that in 1923 it hosted the First International Biennial of Decorative Arts. Its undisputed international identity demands to be told, witnessed and even rewritten with new pages”.
The exhibition, through over 120 original sheets, in some very rare or unique cases, highlights the importance of art printing as an autonomous means of expression. Some authors, such as Picasso, Miró, Kandinsky, Dubuffet, in fact, have considered the graphics a precious tool in their research, entrusting the most daring technical experiments to the printed sheet.
“The exhibition – he recalls Simona Bartolena – offers the opportunity (still quite rare in Italy) to observe the history of art from a particular point of view: that of art printing. Far from being a means of serial reproduction, printing techniques have represented a territory of experimentation and sincere expression of one's feelings for many artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The rarity and beauty of the works exhibited tell us how each master interpreted the printing techniques, bending them to his own needs, with surprising results. Some works will also reveal the secrets of the creative processes, as in the case of the splendid sequence of printing states of the Crucifixion by Georges Rouault”.
“Precisely because of its rarity and uniqueness – he continues Simona Bartolena -, I believe that this exhibition is truly not to be missed: an exciting journey through the history of art through its greatest protagonists, which will prove curious and full of discoveries even for those who have already visited many exhibitions dedicated to the masters of the 900th century!”
Il journey It begins symbolically in the second half of the nineteenth century, with key figures in the development of art in the following decades – from Manet to Renoir, from Toulouse-Lautrec to Cézanne, up to the protagonists of the Symbolist season – and then continues among the various avant-garde movements and their main interpreters: from Braque to Matisse, from Pechstein to Dix, from Kandinsky to Klee, from Miró to Giacometti, from Hartung to Dubuffet, from Vedova to Burri.
In addition to following the flow of art history, the exhibition offers the opportunity to study the work of some artists and movements that have experimented with graphics in a thorough and autonomous way compared to other techniques.
Particularly interesting are the focuses on cubist graphics, which presents works of enormous importance and rarely exhibited to the public Pablo Picasso (Still lifes à la bouteille de Marc, 1911), Georges Braque (Job, 1911), Jacques villon (Renee face, 1911; Chessboard, 1920) Fernand Léger (Composition aux deux personages, 1920), Louis Marcoussis (Table, 1930), John Gray (Still life, 1922), Gleizes (The city (Toul), 1914), Alexander Archipenko (Two different actions, 1921), Henri Laurens (Valencia, 1927) and others; to this is added that which documents the production of the Bauhaus school, with sheets of Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee (Seiltankers, 1923), Lyonel Feininger, Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Natalia Goncharova and the one that examines the graphics produced by the exponents of the German avant-garde movement The Bridge (The bridge), which Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, one of its founders (Melancholy, 1914), of Christian Rohlfs (In love, 1912), Max Pechstein (Head of a bearded fisherman, 1922), Emil Nolde (Prophet, 1912) and even by the Fauvist Raoul Dufy who after a stay in Munich, where he had the opportunity to encounter the suggestions of the German group, engraved Love (1905-1910), a woodcut capable of combining the wildest and most angular primitivism of the Expressionists with the more harmonious and soft one of the French Fauves.
Among the great masters of graphics, the figure of could not be missed Georges rouault, here with the colored aquatint Christ on the Cross (1936), the culmination of his years-long research on the figure of Christ. The definitive version of this masterpiece is presented, along with five rare color proofs and one in black and white, the sequence of which makes the steps necessary to obtain the final result evident.
The exhibition then offers a survey of the great tradition of Italian graphics, with cubo-futurist works by Gino Severini (The milliner, 1916), metaphysicians of Giorgio de Chirico. In the Italian panorama of the last century, masters of engraving also stand out such as Joseph Viviani (Dogs and cabins, 1965) e Luigi Bartolini (The fragile shell, 1936) and figures of painters and sculptors who saw in art printing a field of autonomous expression; this is the case of Giorgio Morandi (Still life with bread basket, 1921), Marino Marini (The test, 1942; The Black Knight, 1960), Max Campigli (The game of diabolo, 1952; Women at the Eiffel Tower, 1951), Zoran Music (Filet bleu, 1957) and two Informal poets such as Emilio Vedova (Clash of Situations opera 13, 1959) e Alberto Burri (Combustion, 1963-1964).
The exhibition also offers a precious opportunity to understand the role and expressive possibilities of the different printing techniques, from etching to lithography, from xylography to pochoir, and tells the story of the relationship between the masters and their trusted printers: a non-hierarchical relationship, which far surpasses the boundaries drawn between creator and executor.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue produced by Ponte43 for ViDi cultural editions.
FROM RENOIR TO PICASSO, FROM MIRÓ TO FONTANA. 120 masterpieces of 900th-century graphics
Orangery, Royal Palace of Monza (viale Brianza 1)
September 28, 2024 - February 23, 2025
Timetables:
Wednesday to Friday 10.00 – 13.00; 14.00 – 18.00
Saturday, Sunday and public holidays 10.00 – 19.00
(The ticket office closes one hour before)
tickets:
Full: €12,00;
Reduced: €10,00;
School ticket (of all levels): €5,00;
Children (7 to 12 years): €5,00;
Free: disabled visitors (over 74% disability) and 1 companion only in case of non-self-sufficiency; children up to 6 years old; companion of school groups (2 per group); companion of adult groups (1 per group); holders of Musei Lombardia season tickets.
Catalog:
Ponte43 for ViDi cultural editions
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