The Museo Novecento's programme for 2021

A year of exhibitions and events at the museum directed by Sergio Risaliti

After being the first museum to inaugurate a new exhibition at the beginning of 2021 - a tribute to the English sculptor Henry Moore, almost 50 years after his memorable exhibition at the Forte di Belvedere in Florence - the Museo Novecento is keeping pace with its planning for 2021 and presents its calendar.
In addition to enhancing the permanent collections, it is necessary to invest in research, the production of events and training. - explains Sergio Risaliti, artistic director of the Museum - This is why we have focused as much on international exhibitions as on young artists, with a view to a museum that is not just a repository of art or a spectacular machine but also a place for experimentation and support for creative talent.

Spring

Giulia Cenci - Museo Novecento

It starts on 28 April 2021 with three events.
The DUEL cycle, featuring international artists on the ground floor who are called upon to engage in a dialectical duel with works from the museum's permanent collection, will feature Giulia Cenci (Cortona, 1988). Heel of Iron, the title of her exhibition, was created and developed around a dialogue with a bronze sculpture by Arturo Martini, Leone di Monterosso - Chimera (c. 1933-35), a modern reworking of a fantastic image belonging to tradition.

Titina maselli - Museo Novecento

étoile. Titina Maselli, Salvatore Ferragamo and the myth of Greta Garbo. The chapel and the small room on the second floor of the Museum will host a new project entitled étoile, with in-depth studies dedicated to some works from the Collections of the City of Florence. The first event, organised in collaboration with the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum and curated by Stefania Ricci and Sergio Risaliti, takes as its starting point Titina Maselli's large canvas dedicated to Greta Garbo, a work donated by the artist to the City of Florence following an appeal launched by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti in the aftermath of the 1966 flood. For the occasion, as if inside a small casket, Titina Maselli's canvas is presented in dialogue with some of the shoes designed by Salvatore Ferragamo for Greta Garbo (open until 29 August 2021).

Paradigm. The architect's table, in the loggia on the ground floor of the museum, inaugurates GENDER GAP, curated by Laura Andreini, a gallery set up with projects and maquettes by 20 international female architects: Carmela Andriani, Sandy Attia, Cristina Celestino, Izaskun Chinchilla, Maria Claudia Clemente, Isotta Cortesi, Elizabeth Diller, Lina Ghotmeh, Carla Juaçaba, Fuesanta Nieto, Simona Ottieri, Carme Pigem, Guendalina Salimei, Marella Santangelo, Alessandra Segantini, Benedetta Tagliabue, Monica Tricario, Patricia Viel, Paola Viganò and Laura Andreini herself. (until 26 September 2021).
In April the Museo Novecento will dedicate ample space to the work of very young artists
Starting on Monday 12, Chiara Gambirasio (Bergamo,1996) will present her site-specific project created for the Ora et Labora cycle, an intervention created specifically for the loggia on the first floor of the Museum (until 10 October 2021).
 Atelier des Beaux-Arts. Also in April, two rooms on the first floor of the Museo Novecento will be transformed into two ateliers where two young artists from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, a partner in the project, will work for six months. The works produced during this period will be displayed in a final exhibition, set up in the same spaces occupied by the two young students.

At the same time, the four winners of WONDERFUL!, an award in support of Italian art addressed to artists and collectives under 40, will be announced. They were selected from more than 290 projects among those that participated in the call. 

Summer

Arturo Martini - Museo Novecento

On Tuesday 15 June 2021, the SOLO cycle, dedicated to the protagonists of the 20th century, will feature Arturo Marini and Florence, curated by Lucia Mannini and Stefania Rispoli with the collaboration of Margherita Scheggi and Valentina Torrigiani. This project reconstructs the fundamental events and intertwining in the evolution of the sculptor's artistic language that took place in the Florentine environment. Arturo Martini (Treviso 1889 - Milan 1947) is present in the Alberto Della Ragione Collection with various significant works, such as the large sculptures La Pisana (c. 1933), the Lion of Monterosso (c. 1933-1935) and The Waiting (c. 1935), as well as a nucleus of small terracottas. The link between Arturo Martini and Florence is thus expressed in the presence, and return, of some of his fundamental works from the 1930s - a brief but relevant chapter that attests to the cultural dynamism of the city in that period - and finally also in the relationship with the visual sources that the Florentine museums were able to offer him. 
Following this, in mid-July, a new appointment in the DUEL cycle will be devoted to Vinicio Berti, whose centenary falls on the anniversary of his birth and whose important collection of works, the fruit of a donation from the artist's widow, is kept in the Museo Novecento.

September in the name of Jenny Saville.

Portrait of Jenny Saville by A. Saville B & W.

After Henry Moore, whose drawings, engravings and sculptures the Museo Novecento is currently exhibiting, it will be the turn of the personal exhibition of the English artist Jenny Saville (Thursday 16 September 2021) one of the most appreciated exponents of the British art movement yBa (young British artist). Since the beginning, her studies have focused on the "imperfections" of the flesh, details that fascinated her as a child, when she first saw the paintings of Titian and Tintoretto during a trip to Italy. All her recent work focuses on feminist and transsexual themes and challenges the stereotypical image we have of the female and male body.  Famous are her latest paintings dedicated to a classic subject of Renaissance art: mother and child, inspired by groups of figures by Michelangelo and Leonardo. And it is precisely with Michelangelo that the painter will initiate a dialogue at Casa Buonarroti, for an artistic project that promises to be one of the most significant of the year.  At the Museo Novecento she will be present on both the ground and first floors, with a series of paintings and drawings. Jenny Saville's exhibition will also extend to the Sala dei Gigli in Palazzo Vecchio and other venues (until 13 February 2022).

Autumn

Monte Verità - Museo Novecento

On 29 October, the exhibition dedicated to Monte Verità, Anarchia, danza e architettura, curated by Sergio Risaliti, Nicoletta Mongini and Chiara Gatti, will open. Saying Monte Verità means evoking a hundred years of utopia and ideals, virtuous encounters and aesthetic research, heterodox experiences in the field of choreography and architecture. Period images, testimonials, projections, symbolic clothes and objects punctuate a journey to the origins of this multidisciplinary cenacle, fervent cradle of European counterculture, destination over time of memorable figures such as Rudolf Laban, dancer and theorist of free dance, Carl Gustav Jung, Hermann Hesse, Marianne Werefkin, Isadora Duncan, Jean Arp, Hugo Ball and last but not least Harald Szeemann, one of the most famous curators of contemporary art. Simultaneous with the exhibition dedicated to this fascinating history, which is as relevant as ever today, the second edition of the Festival Match will be held, dedicated to the performing arts and curated by Stefania Rispoli and Jacopo Milani. 
 
Friday 29 October 2021
The second appointment with the SOLO cycle will be dedicated to Leoncillo. Curated by Martina Corgnati and Enrico Mascelloni, the exhibition aims to explore for the first time the complexity of the references to the ancient and classical that animated the work of Leoncillo Leonardi (Spoleto, 1915-1968). The Leoncillo exhibition joins those of Martini, Medardo Rosso, Mirko, Manzoni, Vedova, Agnetti, Severini and Mauri, in line with the scientific intent of the SOLO project, created to highlight 20th century artists present in the civic collections and to fill the gaps resulting from the absence of works by some of the major exponents of the avant-garde in these collections.  
 
MUSEO NOVECENTO OFF: Special Projects in other venues

From 25 April Henry Moore's Wounded Warrior arrives at Palazzo Vecchio, in the Saturn Terrace 
In connection with the exhibitions dedicated to Henry Moore at the Museo Novecento, the work Wounded Warrior by the English sculptor, currently on display at the Chiostro di Santa Croce, will be relocated to the place originally chosen by Moore. The transfer will take place on 25 April, the same date that, in 1974, should have marked the installation of the bronze at the centre of the Terrazzino di Saturno in Palazzo Vecchio, according to the artist's wishes. The project, realised in collaboration with the British Institute and the Opera di Santa Croce, will remain on display for about six months.

Portrait of Ali Banisadr Photo credit Julia Niebuhr

Ali Banisadr at the Bardini Museum and in the Sala dei Gigli from 29 March to 29 August 2021 with a tribute to the Divine Comedy
Originally from Tehran, Ali Banisadr (1976) moved to the United States as a child and his works are influenced by his biographical events and his condition as a war refugee. Ali Banisadr's works will be exhibited in the Museo Bardini, while in the Sala dei Gigli in Palazzo Vecchio we will find a section with paintings that the artist has dedicated to Dante's Divine Comedy, on the occasion of the celebrations for the 700th anniversary of the Supreme Poet's death.
 
Anj Smith at the Bardini Museum (30 September 2021 - January 2022)
 The exhibition of the British artist Anj Smith (Kent, 1978), conceived for the spaces of the Museo Bardini, will present recent works and new productions, created during the lockdown and exhibited for the first time in Florence in an Italian public institution.