Lights in Florence on the XX century

On the centenary of the Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti  in Florence (1914-2014) an exhibition devoted to the museum’s twentieth-century collections. Despite the fact the gallery is known for its collection of Macchiaioli paintings - the most important around the world, both quantitatively and historically - few people know of the interesting collection of twentieth-century works, received in the last century with donations and purchases, which so far was confined to the deposits of the museum for lack of exhibition space.

Until March 8, through this exhibition, it will be possible to recount the acquisition of these works by the gallery, as well as to highlight the choices made, the cultural ferment in Florence at that time, historical events, ideas, flowering of different currents, in very close contact with the historical and cultural city route.

But the exhibition also aims to be the testing ground for a new possible itinerary inside the Gallery of Modern Art, made of mostly unseen masterpieces of the XX century, hoping that, at the end of this exhibition, they can find permanent space inside the museum.

Among the works selected for the exhibition there are those by the leading interpreters of XX century Italian figurative art like Felice Carena, Casorati, Giorgio De Chirico, Filippo De Pisis, Gino Severini, Capogrossi, Guido Peyron, Ottone Rosai. In addition, there are also - and to a greater extent - works by exponents of the group "Novecento Toscano", Baccio Maria Bacci, Giovanni Colacicchi, and other members close to the magazine Solaria and the Giubbe Rosse cafè, meeting point of the Florentine culture, which made the city a fervent meeting ground of the best Italian artists and intellectuals.

The works on display were purchased at the various editions of the Venice Biennale between 1925 and 1945, at the Rome Quadriennale in 1935, or come from the Società delle Belle Arti in Florence and the Sindacali Toscane, dedicated to the regional figurative culture. Here were bought works by Giovanni Colacicchi, Alberto Magnelli, Oscar Ghiglia, Ardengo Soffici, Lorenzo Viani, Libero Andreotti and Italo Griselli. Other works are instead gifts made by the city to the Gallery. In the postwar years the Gallery adjourned its collections, especially since 1950, with the entry of the award-winning works of the Premio del Fiorino, with paintings by Felice Casorati, Filippo De Pisis, Primo Conti, Fausto Pirandello, Vinicio Berti, Fernando Farulli, Sergio Scatizzi, Corrado Cagli.

The itinerary ends with the latest acquisitions made from 1985 until today which include works by Spadini, Cavaglieri and Morandi.