Easter hunting for culture. Never before have Italian museums offered such a rich and high panorama of exhibitions not to be missed as this year: from ancient art to modern art, from sculpture to contemporary photography, the proposals of museums throughout Italy have a memorable calendar in store.
The Mann in Naples hosts Picasso
«The Mann of Naples participates in the international celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of Picasso’s death with a precious exhibition that starts from the evocative story of his famous visit to Naples and Pompeii in 1917». Thus the director Paolo Giulierini introduces the exhibition «Picasso and the ancient» that the Mann will host from 5 April to 27 August. The exhibition is divided into two parts: the first concerns Picasso’s stays in Naples, describing a museum that is completely different from the current one and the second which brings Picasso’s works into dialogue with those housed in the museum today. The heart of the whole exhibition is the exceptional loan from the British Museum in London of 37 of the 100 etching plates that make up the Vollard Suite. A set of 100 neoclassical etchings produced by Picasso from 1930 to 1937. The Vollard Suite is named after the art dealer who commissioned them, Ambroise Vollard, the suite is in numerous museums and individual etchings from the suite are collectibles .
Helmut Newton Milano
Milan pays tribute to Helmut Netwon with a major retrospective, conceived on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the photographer’s birth (Berlin, 1920 – Los Angeles, 2004) and postponed due to the pandemic: it opens to the public in the halls of Palazzo Reale from Friday 24 March . The exhibition «Helmut Newton. Legacy», which can be visited until 25 June 2023, aims to take a fresh look at the uniqueness, style and provocative side of the work of the «bad boy» of world photography. The exhibition is curated by Matthias Harder, director of the Helmut Newton Foundation, and by Denis Curti, artistic director of «Le Stanze della Fotografia a Venezia», and retraces the entire career of one of the photographers through 250 photographs, magazines, documents and videos most loved and discussed of all time.
Leonardo’s self-portrait in Turin
From 7 April to 9 July 2023, the Royal Library of Turin offers a unique opportunity to get to know and explore the work of Leonardo da Vinci up close, the great protagonist of the Italian Renaissance, through his drawings, his notebook dedicated to the flight of birds and other very rare testimonies related to his time. In the exhibition entitled The genius and his time. A face to face with Leonardo exhibits, in fact, thirteen works by Leonardo da Vinci, including the famous sheets with the Self-Portrait, the Face of a Girl, the Male Head in Profile Crowned with Laurel, and the Code on the Flight of Birds. The exhibition is enriched by a rare selection of drawings, manuscripts, incunabula, ancient maps illustrating the epochal events that accompanied Leonardo’s life from 1452 to 1519. All set up in the two underground vaults of the Royal Library.
Francesco Vezzoli in Rome
The artist Francesco Vezzoli creates a bridge between the contemporary imagination and the history of art. A practice that led him to address his poetics to ancient art, to the past and to his icons, and to extricate himself from different languages, in a game of references and mixes between classical culture – solemn, eternal – and pop culture. The exhibition designed for the Palazzo delle Esposizioni sees different levels cross: contemporary art, Roman history through the works from the premises of the National Roman Museum and the representation of Roman history provided through cinema during the twentieth century. «Vita Dulcis» is scheduled from 22 April to 27 August.
Lisa Ponti at the Design Museum in Milan
The Museum of Italian Design offers a new selection of objects and a new layout retracing the one hundred years of the history of the Milan Triennale, from 1923 to the present day starting from 15 April. On the same day, the exhibition Lisa Ponti Drawings and voices opens, organized on the occasion of Milan Art Week, which presents until 7 May a selection of works by Lisa Ponti, artist, editor, critic and writer, who makes drawing, always made on A4 format sheets, his medium of choice. In her works, sign, drawing and word merge, assuming new meanings, fabulous, dreamlike and ironic.
The great Italian sculpture at the GAM in Turin
The GAM of Turin proposes a chapter to Italian sculpture between 1940 and 1980 with an exhibition that presents 50 works created by 40 artists active in those years: names such as Umberto Mastroianni, Pietro Consagra, Franco Garelli, and Nanda Vigo. Almost half a century marked by strong stylistic shocks both from the point of view of the subjects and of the techniques, and which assigned a new role to sculpture.
Al Pac Yuri Ancarani
From 4 April, the PAC offers «Leave dreams alone» the first monographic exhibition in Italy dedicated to the visionary and poetic research of Yuri Ancarani (Ravenna, 1972), whose works are born from an original mix between documentary cinema and video art. With the same lucid and impartial gaze that has always distinguished the artist’s point of view, the exhibition focuses on the different nuances and linguistic codes through a vast selection of works from the past and a new work conceived specifically for the PAC. The title of the exhibition, “Leave dreams alone” is a quote taken from his latest film, “Atlantis”: it is the phrase that the protagonist Daniele says to his young girlfriend Maila, and which becomes an invitation to see the exhibition without referring to those dreams that the film industry often evokes.
Futurliberty a Milano
The Museo del Novecento and Palazzo Morando | Costume Moda Immagine in Milan in collaboration with Liberty and the Electa publishing house present, starting from 5 April 2023, the exhibition FuturLiberty. The exhibition, with the scientific curatorship of Ester Coen and the artistic direction of Federico Forquet for the fabrics, delves into the events of the Futurist movement in an unprecedented link between painting and applied arts in the two locations of the Modern and Contemporary Art Museums Area of the Municipality of Milan. The works of the protagonists of the futurist movement, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà and Fortunato Depero dialogue with the vorticist paintings of contemporary English artists, such as Percy Wyndham Lewis and Christopher Nevinson, starting from the Vital English Art manifesto of 1914 signed by the ” caffeine of Europe”, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
Treviso, war as artists see it
The Imago Mundi Foundation presents from Wednesday 5 April to Sunday 17 September 2023 at the Gallerie delle Prigioni in Treviso the beautiful exhibition «The war is over! Peace has not yet begun» which presents the works of 14 artists: Francesco Arena, Terry Atkinson, Massimo Bartolini, Eteri Chkadua, Maxim Dondyuk, Harun Farocki, Leon Golub, Alfredo Jaar, Mario Merz, Richard Mosse, Pedro Reyes, Martha Rosler , Sim Chi Yin, Ran Slavin. The exhibition invites us to observe the apparently concluded conflicts of our time and past history and to reflect on the profound difference that exists between the simple closure or stalemate of the armed phase of a conflict and the establishment of a real condition of peace.
Ruth Orkin a Palazzo Chiablese
From shots stolen from the window of his apartment in New York, to portraits of Orson Wells and Albert Einstein. The exhibition «Ruth Orkin. A new discovery» is a journey that recounts the evolution of the American photojournalist’s career, from her first steps to international stardom. An author, on display for the first time in Italy, who is in fact still little known and who with this exhibition the Royal Museums are trying to make her known to the public. Over 150 shots, most of these originals, can be admired at Palazzo Chiablese until 16 July. The common thread is Ruth Orkin’s lost vocation to be a filmmaker, applied in her photography. The photojournalist originally wanted to become a director, but conditions in Hollywood at the time didn’t leave much room for her. From a broken dream, Orkin has been able to create her fortune. She as a spectator she applies her cinematic vision of her to the world around her. The result is a photograph that combines the still image with the moving cinematic one.