Between political and tradition: in and around Novecento

About

On the occasion of the new exhibition "Morandi, Balla, de Chirico Italian Paintings 1920 - 1950", Tornabuoni Art is pleased to present the panel discussion: 

"Between political art and tradition: in and around Novecento"

with the presence of:

Dr. Flavia Frigeri - Teaching Fellow at UCL
Dr. Roberta Cremoncini (Director of Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art)
Dr. Teresa Kittler (Lecturer at University of York)

The group Italian Novecento was founded in 1922, in Milan. The group initially consisted of seven artists – Bucci, Dudreville, Funi, Malerba, Marussig, Oppi and Sironi. It was the art critic and journalist Margherita Sarfatti who conceived the idea of a movement of artists whose work displayed naturalistic features.

The seven Novecento artists wanted to re-establish the simplicity and solemnity of discourse inspired by the Italian pictorial tradition, implicitly proposing certain values which, after World War I, were points of reference for a reordering of civil life. These values were the family, love for domestic and rural life, and respect for tradition: in other words, a sum of inward attitudes which guaranteed moral health and constituted a safeguard against the feared acceleration of progress.
The Sarfatti movement elaborated this poetic and ideology, particularly in the years following the first exhibition of 1923, with the organisation of a large exhibition in Milan in the spring of 1926.

This exhibition takes inspiration from the landmark 1926 exhibition “Prima Mostra del Novecento Italiano” in Milan, organised by the charismatic writer and curator Margherita Sarfatti, who launched the Novecento movement. In particular, the show looks at figurative art of this period through the three main themes of the original Novecento exhibition: still life, landscape and the representations of women.