From 7 December 2024 until 5 May 2025, Palazzo Bisaccioni, the headquarters of Fondazione CR Jesi, will be hosting the second leg of the exhibition “La libera maniera. Abstract and informal art in the Intesa Sanpaolo collections”, organised and promoted by Intesa Sanpaolo, Fondazione CR Jesi and Fondazione Ivan Bruschi, in partnership with Gallerie d’Italia.
The exhibition - curated by Marco Bazzini, one of the most well-known scholars of today’s figurative culture - draws on the prestigious Intesa Sanpaolo collections, within the framework of an effective collaboration which was also activated with the two Foundations in 2023 and launched an innovative exhibition itinerary in two stages, first in Arezzo, from 2 March until 21 July 2024, and then in Jesi, from 7 December 2024 to 5 May 2025.
Compared to the first appointment in Arezzo, the exhibition which will be visible in the bigger exhibition spaces of Palazzo Bisaccioni comprises a larger number of works, over forty to be precise, all of which have been carefully selected from the Intesa Sanpaolo collections.
The exhibition considers the period between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the fabulous Sixties in Italy. Just over a decade, during which the country rebuilt itself, leaving behind the material ruins of the cities, the economy and civil society and beginning, in what can be imagined as an abandoned and uncultivated territory, the reconstruction of a cultural awareness which had suffered heavily from the restrictions imposed during the years of Fascist rule and, after the tragedy of the war, no longer met the demands of modern society. Italy was reborn in the Fifties, and it was at this time that the Republic was formed and the arts were reawakened, with numerous experiences that weren’t without heated argument. The debate driven by opposing fronts with different political - and also poetic - orientations, offered proof of the real vitality and recovery of Italian art.
The exhibition in Jesi
The exhibition begins with those personalities like Alberto Magnelli and Marchigian artist Corrado Cagli, who had already had an initial abstract experience between the two wars and were returning to Italy after exile, bringing their most recent artistic experiences with them. This was a time when artists were opening up to an expressive freedom made up of numerous different styles, starting with the polymaterial sensitivity of Alberto Burri and the new spatial dimensions investigated by Lucio Fontana together with a sizeable group of youngsters, of whom the exhibition features Edmondo Bacci, Gino Morandis, Tancredi Parmeggiani, Cesare Peverelli and Gianni Dova.
The new generations, who were able to consolidate their pictorial proposals from the end of the Forties, began addressing their efforts towards new experiences that discovered the sign, Carla Accardi, Achille Perilli and Antonio Sanfilippo (exponents of the Forma Group based in Rome) but also the gesture that can take on revolutionary connotations, as in the work of Emilio Vedova. Colour and chromatics decant in the exquisite painting of Afro Basaldella and Mario Nanni, while others among their contemporaries are interested in constructing a tangible, objective reality that surpasses every extraction or reference to reality, such as, among those present in the exhibition,, Gillo Dorfles, Bruno Munari, Atanasio Soldati, Gianni Monnet (belonging to the Arte Concreta Movement formed in Milan). And then there are those like Renato Birolli, Ennio Morlotti and Antonio Corpora who continue to look to nature, proposing dense pictorial surfaces or, on the contrary, who peruse the atomic universe which, at that time, had no small influence on the arts, as is the case in the work of Enrico Baj, Guido Biasi and Mario Persico. Women are part of this new dimension too, with a strongly independent sensitivity, and in addition to the works of Accardi, those of Carol Rama, Renata Boero, Regina, Paola Levi Montalcini and a very young Grazia Varisco are on display.
And lastly, a nucleus of artists formed during this period who, from these beginnings, leapt beyond the Informal to lead the research of the decade that followed, in which new pictorial dimensions were conquered: Toti Scialoja, Gastone Novelli, Mario Nigro, Enrico Castellani, Gianni Colombo and Agostino Bonalumi. The exhibition also features works by Roberto Crippa, Piero Dorazio, Plinio Mesciulam, Alberto Moretti, Cesare Peverelli, Giulio Turcato and Arnaldo Pomodoro who was undertaking his first pictorial experiences in the mid-Fifties.
The exhibition in Arezzo (From 2 March to 9 June 2024, Casa Museo dell’Antiquariato di Arezzo)
The exhibition starts with a presentation of that brief abstract experience between the two wars, with artists like Alberto Magnelli and Corrado Cagli, and then opens up to a liberality of approaches, hence the title of the exhibition “La libera maniera”, also paying tribute to Giorgio Vasari in the 450th anniversary of his death, which look towards poly-material art, as in the works of Alberto Burri, or new dimensions, as in those of Lucio Fontana, Edmondo Bacci and Gino Morandis.
In the exhibition space of Casa Bruschi, works by young artists move towards experiences in discovery of the sign, with Carla Accardi, Achille Perilli and Antonio Sanfilippo (also exponents of the Forma group), as well as the gesture, like the revolutionary gesture of Emilio Vedova. Alternatively, they approach a tangible reality that extends beyond every extraction from what is real, as sought by the Movimento Arte Concreta, represented in the exhibition by Gillo Dorfles, Bruno Munari, Atanasio Soldati and Gianni Monnet. And then there are those such as Birolli and Morlotti who look at nature with dense painted surfaces or, by contrast, those who examine the atomic universe of both the micro and macro cosmos, Enrico Baj and Guido Biasi. Women are part of this new dimension too, with a strongly independent sensitivity, and in addition to the works of Accardi, those of Carol Rama, Renata Boero, Regina and Paola Levi Montalcini are on display.
Lastly, a nucleus of artists who learned their art during this period and who, from these beginnings, leapt beyond the Informal to lead the research of the decade that followed, in which new pictorial dimensions were conquered: Toti Scialoja, Gastone Novelli, Mario Nigro and Enrico Castellani.From 2 March to 21 July 2024, Casa Museo dell’Antiquariato di Arezzo, which belongs to Intesa Sanpaolo, will be open to the public with the exhibition “La libera maniera. Abstract and informal art in the Intesa Sanpaolo collections”, organised and promoted by Intesa Sanpaolo, Fondazione Ivan Bruschi and Fondazione CR Jesi, in partnership with Gallerie d’Italia.
The exhibition - curated by Marco Bazzini, one of the most well-known scholars of today’s figurative culture - draws on the prestigious Intesa Sanpaolo collections within the framework of an effective collaboration which was also activated with the two Foundations in 2023 and launches an innovative exhibition itinerary in two legs, first in Arezzo and then in Jesi, from 7 December 2024 to 5 May 2025.
The exhibition consists of a rational selection of thirty-four works, which form the central nucleus of the two legs, and considers the period between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the swinging Sixties in Italy. Just over a decade, during which the country rebuilt itself, leaving behind the material ruins of the cities, the economy and civil society and beginning, in what can be imagined as an abandoned and uncultivated territory, the reconstruction of a cultural awareness which had suffered heavily from the restrictions imposed during the twenty years of Fascist rule.
Italy was reborn in the Fifties, and it was at this time that the Republic was formed and the arts were reawakened, with numerous experiences that didn’t fail to arouse heated argument. The debate driven by opposing fronts with different political - and also poetic - orientations, offered proof of the real vitality and recovery of Italian art.
Watch the backstage video of the exhibition in Arezzo
