Pistoia Novecento

With the birth of the Fondazione Pistoia Musei and the new installation of the galleries, Palazzo de’ Rossi acquires a specific vocation to present the work of 20th-century artists of Pistoia, becoming the figurehead of a new museum complex, a point of reference for making known those artists in the last century who from their home territory (Pistoia became a provincia in its own right in 1927) boldly pitched themselves against the great names of art history, participating in the Venice Biennales, the Milan Triennials, the Rome Quadriennials, and other exhibitions in Italy and abroad.

The exhibition Pistoia Novecento 1900-1945 curated by Annamaria Iacuzzi and Philip Rylands, will narrate the artistic development of the city in the decades from the opening years of the century to 1945. It will be possible to admire works of art by Symbolist sculptor Andrea Lippi and by Futurist painter Mario Nannini (both of whom died during World War I), by Francesco Chiappelli, Alberto Caligiani, Giulio Innocenti, and by artists of the Pistoia school of art between the two World Wars, including the young Marino Marini, Renzo Agostini, Pietro Bugiani, Alfiero Cappellini, Corrado Zanzotto, Umberto Mariotti, and Egle Marini. The new installation will present artists from other cities with connections to Pistoia, such as Galileo Chini (who was commissioned to decorate the Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia e Pescia, 1905), Giovanni Costetti and Achille Lega.