Mario Sironi, Allegory of work, 1932-33, 271.5 x 202 cm, oil on canvas, Banco di Sardegna Collection – BPER Banca Group
Modena – The theme of the “word” – which will guide the agenda of festivalfilosofia scheduled from 15 to 17 September in Modena, Carpi and Sassuolo – will be the leitmotif of the next exhibition that the BPER Banca Gallery is dedicating to Mario Sironi.
From newspaper pages to posters, from envelopes dotted with addresses to writings that cut through images, the word has often been the context and support of the pictorial work of one of the greatest Italian artists of the twentieth century.
An acute interpreter of the principles of a return to classicism, without falling into sterile academic imitation, the Sardinian artist in the early 1920s crowded his canvases with silent figures with reflective gazes. Their accomplished forms and statuesque gestures, even if calm, vibrate in environments dominated by silence.
Even his still lifes seem to spring from a rarefied universe. The painted objects – vases, columns, capitals – populate the compositions as models extrapolated directly from the world of ideas, with the function of archetypal symbols.
Curated by Daniela Ferrari, the path entitled Mario Sironi. Solemnity and torment is preparing to present a corpus of 40 works by exhibiting, for the first time outside Sardinia, various works dated between 1926 and 1958, belonging to a rich collection donated to Banco di Sardegna, part of the BPER Banca Group, by Mimì Costa, artist’s partner.
Mario Sironi, Figures, 1930, 57.5 x 68 cm, Oil on canvas, BPER Banca Collection
Among the works on loan from prestigious private collections, from the Mario Sironi Association and from the Mario Sironi Archive there will also be the large painting Allegory of workpreparatory study of a fresco now destroyed.
The exhibition aims to restore and highlight the pictorial and graphic grandeur of this master who was able to represent the torments of man in a troubled era such as that of the Ventennio.
Mainly known for his desolate and solitary urban landscapes, expression of a sense of emptiness and lost identity typical of the metropolis, with their expanding suburbs, populated by gasometers and chimneys, Sironi in the Thirties manifested the urgency to express the vocation social aspect of his art in ways consistent with the corporate aspects of the fascist ideology he shares. His devotion to a solemn art, made up of a compositional system aimed at classicism, finds its maximum expression in wall art projects and decorative programs dominated by firm lines, austere postures, an expression of order, gravity, rigor.
The exhibition, with free admission, can be visited from Friday to Sunday, from 10 to 18. During the days of festivalfilosofia, Friday 15 and Sunday 17, it will be open from 9 to 21; Saturday 16 September from 9 to 23.