Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Milan, September 19 2021 – The “Gianni Mattioli Collection” will be sold to the Museo del Novecento, declared by the Superintendence as a “complex of exceptional artistic and historical interest”, therefore bound and indivisible. The Council has in fact accepted the proposal of free loan for 5 years (renewable) by the sole owner Giacomo Rossi, nephew of Gianni Mattioli. 

The Mattioli collection is the most important private collection of futurist and metaphysical art in the world, capable of competing with the relevant sections of prestigious international museums. It is a nucleus of 26 masterpieces by Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, Giorgio Morandi, Mario Sironi, Amedeo Modigliani, just to name the most influential names, and has an insurance value of approximately 143 million euros. 

Among the masterpieces is “Materia”, perhaps the most ambitious painting painted by Boccioni in 1912, which brings together his most innovative expression in a pictorial manifesto; “Bottles and fruit bowl (still life)” from 1916, one of Morandi's most famous masterpieces; “Composition with propeller” from 1919 by Mario Sironi, a collage that represents the moment of the artist's transition from futurism to metaphysics. 

The works, which will arrive in Milan in the spring of 2022 after a prestigious traveling exhibition in Russia, will enrich the permanent museological itinerary of the Milanese museum. 

In the museum rooms the masterpieces of the masters of the Italian twentieth century will return to dialogue with each other, starting from the Futurism gallery where you can admire true masterpieces such as "Materia", perhaps the most ambitious painting painted by Boccioni in 1912, which he collects in a pictorial manifesto its most innovative expression; also by Boccioni, “Dynamism of a cyclist” (1913), with the renewed chromatic intensity; “Mercury passes in front of the sun” (1914) by maestro Giacomo Balla; the liveliness of the modern city of “La Galleria di Milano” (1912) and the revolutionary collage “Interventionist Manifestation” (1914) by Carlo Carrà; “Composition with propeller” and the “White Horse” of 1919 by Mario Sironi, paintings that mark the artist's transition from futurism to metaphysics. Among the six canvases by Morandi, friend and favorite artist of Gianni Mattioli, the "Landscape" of 1914 can be related to that of the Jucker collection of 1913; just as the two Carràs will reunite in their metaphysical suspension “The Engineer's Lover” (1921) and “Still Life with the Team” (1919).