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The reopening of the Gallery closes a journey that began in 2017 to renew the entire route ten years after its inauguration - Museo del Novecento

Milan, September 30 2021 – The Futurism Gallery reopens to the public from 1 October, the last stage of the project to reorganize the Museum itinerary 10 years after its opening.  
The reopening of the Gallery closes a journey begun in 2017 and curated by Anna Maria Montaldo and the Scientific Committee, composed of Flavio Fergonzi, Danka Giacon, Maria Grazia Messina, Antonello Negri, Iolanda Ratti and Claudio Salsi. The project involved all the rooms and progressed in stages. In February 2019, the new layout of the Marino Marini collection and the spaces on the fourth floor (wing of Palazzo Reale) was inaugurated, i.e. the rooms dedicated to art from the end of the 2021s to the threshold of the XNUMXs. The second stage was the opening, in March XNUMX, of the new rearranged spaces on the fourth and fifth floors of the Museum, dedicated to the period between the XNUMXs and the XNUMXs.

The hall on the second floor of the Museum is now completely renovated, both in terms of spaces and the exhibition itinerary. The new Futurism Gallery has been entirely redesigned, defining new parameters in the dialogue between the works and the space of the Sala delle Colonne, strongly characterized by the architectural physiognomy of the Arengario. The Corian partitions have been eliminated and the wallpaper on the walls has disappeared, replaced by a bright light grey. If in the 2010 exhibition the desire to read the masterpieces of the early twentieth century within intimate spaces, which harkened to the interiors of bourgeois homes, was in fact explicit, in the new rearrangement the Hall regains its monumental vocation, thanks to the exhibition and lighting system edited by Italo Rota with Alessandro Pedretti. The new innovative lighting system, which combines diffused light with specific accents on individual works, was created by Artemide specifically for the Museo del Novecento.

The small room at the entrance, previously dedicated to the European avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, is transformed into an open space that introduces futurist poetics thanks to the exhibition of Futurist Manifestos - a fundamental tool for disseminating futurist ideas and graphics - and important works on paper by Antonio Sant'Elia and Giacomo Balla. A video installation also refers to the experimental climate of the first thirty years of the twentieth century, with important extracts from futurist and avant-garde cinema.

The Futurist masterpieces are exhibited considering not only the technical-pictorial evolution of the Masters of the period, but also the thematic and stylistic closeness of their works. The itinerary, which displays masterpieces by Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini, to indicate the most important, is enriched by works from the Antognini Pasquinelli collection, four paintings exhibited for the first time on this occasion: Crepuscolo by Boccioni, Tuscan landscape by Severini, Car speed + lights by Giacomo Balla and a portrait by Mario Sironi, Futurist figure (Antigrazioso). The works are placed in dialogue with the Futurist masterpieces of the civic collections, which have grown over the years thanks to the meeting between shrewd public and private collecting policies.

The Gallery follows two parallel stories: while the main wall bears witness with undisputed masterpieces to the pictorial experiments of the artists around their favorite typical themes - the subjects of urban life, the beauty of movement and the machine, patriotic enthusiasm - the works of The other wall, in the spaces between the columns, narrates futurist painting and sculpture through traditional subjects such as the figure and still life. The room closes with Boccioni's famous bronze Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913) which challenges the limits of heaviness and static nature of matter through the celebration of motion that extends from the naked body in motion to the space that contains it.

The new story of the Museo del Novecento does not end here: at least two chapters of fundamental importance will be written in the near future. In 2022, thanks to the loan of the Gianni Mattioli Collection, the largest private collection of Italian futurist art in the world, the works of the Canavese collection, formerly by Fedele Azari, those of the Jucker collection and, indeed, Mattioli's paintings will return to dialogue with each other. making the already rich Futurism Gallery the most important exhibition of Italian art of the early twentieth century at an international level.

Finally, with the ambitious project to expand the Museum to the second Torre dell'Arengario, it will be possible to close the story of Italian art of the 20th century and open up to the investigation of the most current artistic practices. The new building will not only provide the opportunity to expand the exhibition spaces, but also those dedicated to services for the public: laboratories, auditoriums, multifunctional spaces.

The Museo del Novecento is therefore moving towards becoming an increasingly rich and complex research centre, capable of reflecting an increasingly multicultural society with an international profile and of enhancing the idea of ​​a dynamic, open, welcoming and participatory place.

In the autumn of 2021 the volume “The Museum of the Twentieth Century” will be published by Silvana Editoriale. A New Story”, which will illustrate the renewal process of the entire permanent collection with an original narrative language.

The work of these years has been recognized and rewarded with renewed trust on the part of Foundations, Archives and private collectors, with whom the Museum has built important alliances through donations and loans.

First of all, the aforementioned Mattioli and Antognini Pasquinelli collections. The latter includes, in addition to the four Futurist masterpieces already mentioned, two important works that complete the "Air of Paris" section on the fourth floor of the Museum: The Apollo Room, a metaphysical work by de Chirico, and a work by Savinio, Jour de reception.

Thanks to the generosity of private collectors, the tour of the Museo del Novecento is also enriched with two new important works: Chinese Festival by Mario Schifano, a monumental painting from 1968, to which an entire room on the fifth floor is dedicated; and Magnete, a 1969 installation by Emilio Prini, a fundamental artist of the Italian scene of the Sixties and Seventies, in the conceptual art section.