The exhibition “Il Novecento milanese. Da Sironi ad Arturo Martini” (“Novecento Milanese. From Sironi to Arturo Martini”) is housed in Spazio Oberdan in Milan, and is open until 4th May 2003.
It is accompanied by a beautiful Mazzotta catalogue, as always full of pictures and documents and edited by Elena Pontiggia, Nicoletta Colombo and Claudia Gian Ferrari.
Ninety works of strong artistic and commercial value which reconstruct the events of the Milan nucleus of the “Novecento Italiano”, the most important Italian movement in the Twenties.

Anselmo Bucci

Everything began way back in 1923, in the elegant gallery of cavalier Lino Pesaro in Via Manzoni in Milan, where today stands the Museum Poldi Pezzoli. The group was presented here, this is where the exhibition which was to become part of history was shown. There were seven members.
The most famous Malerba, the others were Funi and Dudreville, Oppi and Bucci, and then Marussig and Sironi.
The critic Margherita Sarfatti supported them. And the initial exhibition was inaugurated by no less than the President of the Council of Deputies Cavalier Benito Mussolini.
Achille Funi

In 1924 the group appeared at the Venice “Biennale”, then it split up and was re-founded in 1925. At the beginning of the Thirties the movement was undermined by both external controversies, that is by the neo romantic and anti-novecentisti movements like the Rome school, the Six of Turin and the Chiaristi, and internal ones, with the return to mural painting supported by Sironi.
Returning to the fresco, in this case that of Sironi, did not only mean changing technique but also uprooting the classical system of art which was based on framed paintings, on the exhibition circuit and on the market. 1931-1932 saw the end of the period of the great international exhibitions of the group and then from the second post-war period an interminable silence began. It coincided with the group being associated to fascism and with their art being indicated as fascist art. We now know what historiographic superficiality led historians to completely ignore a period and a movement which has only recently been rediscovered.

Emilio Malerba

This exhibition is an example.
The choice of Milan is explained by the fact that the “Novecento” was established there and achieved its highest popularity in Milan. Those Milan years in the first half of the 1920’s were the only ones in which the epic form of the movement was clearly outlined, which meant to say return to order and return above all to classicism. The classicism had to be modern, both in the style and in the subjects.
The human values, said Sarfatti, are central because classicism coincided with the re-found centrality of man in work. So much so that the movement was also called neo-humanism.
Therefore, this painting pursued a modern classicism, which meant to say a re-adjustment of the ancient Grand Masters modified by a new sense of essentialism, in tune with what was happening in the “Return to order” in Europe. Starting from the years after 1925, artists from all over Italy started meeting around the group.
The Milan part, the real heart of the group, is present in this exhibition of high artistic and historical quality with works also by Carlo Carrà, Arturo Tosi, Arturo Martini, Adolfo Wildt, Francesco Messina, Alberto Salitti, Raffaele De Grada, Zanini and others. Mario Sironi and Arturo Martini, also present with a significant amount of work, are the two ideal centres of this exhibition. All these novecento masterpieces, ideologically branded for many years, are exhibited.
So here, you can find the urban landscapes of Sironi; the monumental “Sua Maestà il Re” (His majesty the King) (Milan, 1930, CIMAC) by Adolfo Wildt;



the great group of the Trilogy of kings (1926) by Arturo Martini whose “Donna al sole” (Woman in the sun) (1930) can also be admired. The “Novecento” room in the Biennale of 1924 has even been reconstructed with works which also include Sironi’s “L’Architetto” (The Architect), maybe the artist’s most famous masterpiece; and then “Una persona e due età” (one person and two ages) by Achille Funi, “Autunno” (Autumn) by Piero Marussig, the great altar-piece “I pittori” (The painters) by Anselmo Bucci.
Then there are several previously unseen works or not seen for decades, including a previously unseen “Ritratto di Margherita Sarfatti” (portrait of Margherita Sarfatti) by Mario Sironi, a “Ritratto di donna”(portrait of a woman) (1925) by Emilio Malerba considered lost for a long time, the previously unseen “Ritratto di signora” (Portrait of a Lady) (1922) by Achille Funi, the ironic “Cleopatra” by Anselmo Bucci (only exhibited in 1927), “Il monticino” by Carlo Carrà never exhibited in Milan after 1942.

Outside the exhibition there are three great novecento works spread over the territory and not very well known to the public: the monumental “Amore”, discorso primo (1921-24) by Leonardo Dudreville, a canvas measuring approximately 4 metres x 3 now at Banca Intesa, “Et ultra” by Adolfo Wildt exhibited at the Italian Exhibition of the Novecento in 1929 and now at the Monumental Cemetery, and the “S. Ambrogio” by Wildt which is part of Giovanni Muzio’s war memorial.
Translated by interpres sas