Picasso, de Chirico e Dalí. Dialogo con Raffaello

At the Mart in Rovereto, the first exhibition dedicated to the influence that Raffaello Sanzio had on the major protagonists of the twentieth century: Picasso, de Chirico and Dalí. Coming from some of the most important international museums, such as the Uffizi Galleries, the Musée national Picasso in Paris and the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres, 100 masterpieces make up a path in which ancient and modern, once again, interact.

It is a timeless art that goes beyond chronological limits and goes beyond academic definitions that Vittorio Sgarbi proposes at the Mart. Announced at the beginning of his mandate, in the spring of 2019, the President's design is that of a museum that deals with art, not with ideological limitations. In Rovereto, "classical and modern masters interact with each other and with the works of one of the richest public collections in Europe. The Mart schedule spans the centuries ".
This exhibition proposal is consistent with the original vocation of the Rovereto museum, inaugurated for almost 20 years. The same architectural forms recall classicism, starting with the homage to the Pantheon in Rome declared by Mario Botta in the conception of the now iconic dome. If already in 2013 the Mart combined the work of Antonello da Messina with the most recent portraiture, the Caravaggio exhibition took place last autumn. The contemporary who put one of the seventeenth-century Maestro's most dramatic paintings into dialogue with two fundamental figures of the twentieth century: the artist Alberto Burri and the poet Pier Paolo Pasolini.

The investigation continues, from May 2 to August 29, 2021, with a new major exhibition: Picasso, de Chirico and Dalí. Dialogue with Raphael: an unpublished and in-depth study on the way in which the art of Urbinate influenced the research of the three great masters of the twentieth century. Curated by Beatrice Avanzi and Victoria Noel-Johnson, the project emphasizes the visual dialogue not only between Raphael and the three artists of the twentieth century, but also between the artists themselves. If everyone studied classical art and were fascinated by it, the reinterpretation was totally different: de Chirico's relationship with Raphael, for example, was cultured and systematic, that of Picasso more immediate and irreverent, finally Dalí will always look to the master with profound admiration, aspiring to become "the Raphael of the twentieth century". The three aesthetic repertoires were, therefore, deeply individual.

At the Mart over 100 works offer different variations of Raphael's aesthetics, of which the famous self-portrait from the Uffizi Galleries is exhibited. The 500th anniversary of his death, which has just ended, is an opportunity for a reinterpretation of the influence exercised by Urbinate on Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí. Although in a completely independent way, the three artists were inspired by the lesson of the Renaissance master whose work they studied, quoted and interpreted, an essential example in the search for grace, balance and renewed classicism.
If in the years of the return to order many European artists drew on the example of the old masters, the three protagonists of the exhibition "sought" Raphael throughout their long careers. As before them happened to numerous artists including Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, of whom the exhibition presents some works, that for Raphael was a constant passion.
As the curator Beatrice Avanzi illustrates in the catalog accompanying the exhibition, "Raphael's work, and life itself, have been crystallized in a myth nourished by seduction and unanimous consent [...] the very fact that the greatest artists of the century interpret of his most revolutionary instances, have found a constant point of reference in the work of the 'divine painter' is an eloquent testimony of a magisterium that appears today, in our eyes, to be eternal ”.

If de Chirico openly manifested his admiration for Urbinate, which he studied and copied, considering it a reference for the elaboration of metaphysical poetics and for the subsequent classicist season, also Dalí made no secret of his consideration for the master, a myth to which he looked at since his youth and which, after World War II, suggested extraordinary reworkings, leading him to declare: “Long live modern art on condition that you paint like Raphael”.... read the rest of the article»