{"id":11612,"date":"2015-11-25T07:45:55","date_gmt":"2015-11-25T06:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.arttrav.com\/?p=11612"},"modified":"2016-03-09T08:40:09","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T07:40:09","slug":"bardini-toscana900","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arttrav.com\/florence\/bardini-toscana900\/","title":{"rendered":"Rarely seen 20th-century art at Villa Bardini"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art of the 20th century in Tuscany<\/strong> is the focus of a series of exhibitions and events this fall organized by Piccoli Grandi Musei (Small Big Museums), a regional-based project by the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze bank. Researchers found that there are a good 100 museums<\/strong> and public collections in the region where you can go to see works from the Novecento<\/em>, and they’ve done an excellent census<\/a> of them. But curator Lucia Mannini<\/strong> and her team at Villa Bardini<\/strong> got to thinking how interesting it would be to get a look at a whole corpus of works from this period that are not<\/em> normally accessible to the public.<\/p>\n

Between a large collection for the offices of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena, others in archives requiring special passes to get in, and many in private homes, there’s a wealth of works that tell the story of collecting practices and taste of the past century.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Felice
Felice Carena’s La Scuola, from the Monte dei Paschi Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Villa Bardini’s exhibit Toscana \u2018900 Da Rosai a Burri. Percorsi inediti tra le collezioni fiorentine<\/strong> is thus a story of collections perhaps more so than of the paintings they contain, with an additional layer of curatorial choice to create a show that represents the first fifty years of artistic production in Florence and Tuscany. The exhibit is is located in the quiet and uncrowded Villa Bardini, a series of intimate rooms that were once an apartment, and it’s also an opportunity to see its annexed gardens high above the city, with an incredible view of everything below.<\/p>\n

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The bank<\/h2>\n

The exhibition is divided into sections based on the collections from which works were borrowed. The first, substantial part comes from loans from the Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the historical bank in Siena that incorporated the Banca Toscana, who purchased these works in the 1980s. This bank worked with a group of art experts and consultants to create a really unified collection of works from the first part of the 20th century in Tuscany, at a moment in which these artists were starting to become a bit famous; the purchases also contributed to their fame and market value, which the bank promoted through exhibitions and catalogues. But the function of a bank collection is also practical: other than investment, it was to decorate the walls of their offices. The largest and most important ones were in the Director’s and President’s offices, and the others are still kept in various rooms, making it unlikely that the public would ever get to see them… and yet they are totally worth taking a closer look!<\/p>\n

Two large paintings from 1928 greet us in the first room and they are complete opposites. Felice Carena’s La Scuola<\/em> shows the members of the art institution at which he was a teacher – the Accademia in Florence – and is also a statement on what this period felt was important in art, i.e. the human body and not still life, which is literally pushed off to one side. This huge painting was acquired from the Pittsburgh Museum of Fine Arts when they decided to de-accession works that didn’t fit their collection, and it hung above the desk of the bank’s president. The classicism of a work like this is apparent particularly in the position of the reclining female nude, whom we see in works by Titian and Giorgione.<\/p>\n

\"Rosai,
Rosai, I giocatori di toppa 1928<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In contrast to the “academicism” of Carena is the down-to-earth Giocatori di Toppa<\/em> of the same year by Ottone Rosai. This anti-Bourgeois Florentine artist showed the nitty gritty of the streets and the daily life that took place in Florence’s dark alleys. The solid forms engaged in play remind us of two other Tuscan pioneers, Giotto and Masaccio, whose work, when reproduced in black and white, had something of this realist effect.<\/p>\n

\"Donghi,
Donghi, Donne per le Scale, 1929<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Different again is the work chosen for the exhibit’s poster – in part, the curator admits, because the graphic artist could use its open space! But also because everyone is fascinated by this very realistic slice of life depicting women in conversation on the stairs of their household. This is Antonio Donghi’s Donne per le Scale<\/em> of 1929, a work admired by the art historian Roberto Longhi, who sees in its conceptual realism and stillness echoes of Piero della Francesca<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The libraries<\/h2>\n
\"Marcel
Marcel Duchamp, La mari\u00e9e mise \u00e0 nu par ses c\u00e8libataires, meme. 1934. BNCF.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Anyone who has held a library card in Florence knows that this city’s treasures are infinite. The Biblioteca Nazionale has 135 kilometers of bookshelves full of printed materials. A number of these items are not accessible to standard card-holders but require special permission, for study reasons, to access. This includes the rare manuscripts and early printed books, but also an amazing collection of artist’s books from the 1960s onwards purchased from collector Loriano Bertini in 2000, to which were added other similar works.<\/p>\n

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In love with this playful artist’s book by Enrico Baj, 1972 from the #bncf collection in the @villabardini exhibit #toscana900 #blogger4T900 #tuscanybuzz<\/a><\/p>\n

A photo posted by Alexandra Korey (@arttrav) on