In Novara it is on display The myth of Venice: quality artistic paths that make you rediscover the Serenissima of the 19th century and a season of gradual renewal
At the Mudec in Milan there is an exhibition dedicated to Piet Mondrian, one of the masters of abstract art. IS a “wrong” exhibition, which gives no reason for its title, From figuration to abstraction (we talked about it here), but simply compares the works of painters of the Hague School, active between 1860 and 1890, typically nineteenth-century in the almost photographic representation and often en plein air of landscapes, seascapes, people, with the research of the master, always more schematic and “mental”.
To the visitor, in representing views and similar images, the former appear luxuriant and technically flawless, yet irremediably “dated”; the second elementary, simple, almost like an “unprepared amateur”. An unacceptable confrontation, without reading the evolution between one artistic way and the other, indeed almost downgrading them both in comparison.
(For those looking for the motivation for the curatorial choice we will add that the works, almost all coming from Art Museum The Hague dell’Aja, are the result of a recent acquisition of the museum it has the largest Mondrian collection in the world, received with the commitment to spread them around the world.)
All this to emphasize once again the intelligent and appropriate choice that the city of Novara offers to its citizens and to all lovers of 19th century painting: a far-reaching “specialization” that involves many private collectors.
The exhibitions at Visconteo Sforzesco Castle of the Piedmontese city are therefore always interesting and full of works that are little or not seen, anthological in the conception and narrative in the development, able each time to be both “pleasant” and cultured. The same is true for the review The myth of Venice. From Hayez to the Biennale, which, on the occasion of the sixteenth birthday of the lagoon city, proposes them an unexpected and original vision, both in the glimpses and views, and in the portraits and family scenes, by artists who knew her well, either because they were born in Venice or because they were somehow connected to her artistic life.
A further demonstration that what was for decades considered the “lowest century” in our art history was also able to offer valuable proposals, as well as a widespread quality and an almost linear evolution from the last phase of romanticism he was born in purism al realism, dall’historicist eclecticism al symbolism, from neo-Renaissance al divisionism.
In Novara the 70 works on display – opened by a large historical representation of Francesco Hayez, of which you can also admire the valuable Venus playing with two doves, actually a portrait of a ballerina who was a lover of the count who commissioned the work from him – they bear the signatures, among others, of Ippolito Caffi, Pietro Fragiacomo, Carlo Ferrari, Alessandro Milesi, Giacomo Favretto. To which are added Guglielmo Ciardi and Luigi Nono, to each of whom a section is dedicated, and Ettore Tito, whose works full of children and commoners – delicious Round dance and magnificent Laundresses on Lake Garda – they strike immediately.
We go from Venice bare and anti-tourist to the “real” one, of market, from the parties, give her noblewomen dressed as men to different canvases dedicated to children (a whole, engaging section), with bright landscapes on the water to the families of fishermen, from the intimate devotion depicted by Nono to the popular vitalism of the works of Ettore Tito (July, with a brood of children swimming on the Lido, and the “rough sea” of the Linen in the wind). In short, an exhibition that offers quality artistic paths, going through a period of gradual renewal and tracing a significant history of taste.
The myth of Venice. From Hayez to the Biennale
Visconteo Sforzesco Castle – Martyrs of Liberty square n. 215, Novara
opening hours: from Tuesday to Sunday 10 am-7pm, until March 13th
admission: € 12; reduced € 10 (over 65, under 26, groups, teachers, journalists, agreements); children aged 6 to 19 € 6; free (disabled, guides, children under 6)
METS editions catalog Art itineraries