Guest. Chiara Toti

IThe volume is dedicated to the engineer Alberto Della Ragione and his passionate story as a collector and promoter of the arts of the twentieth century. The engineer, born in Campania and Ligurian by adoption, in fact belonged to that group of collectors, gallery owners and critics who, between the twenties and thirties, rejuvenated national taste, turning to the art of their time. Alongside the acquisition of large quantities of works – ranging from futurism, metaphysics and the twentieth century – Della Ragione’s work was distinguished by his involvement alongside the new generations. In the early 1940s he took over the Corrente gallery, later called Galleria della Spiga and Corrente, placing himself at the center of a vast activity of patronage and promotion which, radiating from Renato Birolli and Renato Guttuso, represented an important counterpoint to the choices of the regime . Precisely those events will lead him to mature the need for a public destination of his collection which materialized in 1970 in the gift to the city of Florence.

Fondazione Carlo Marchi. Studi, vol. 33

Chiara Toti

She studied at the universities of Florence and Siena, specializing in the study of the history of twentieth century art. Starting from research on Alberto Della Ragione, he widened his interest to twentieth-century collecting, its protagonists and its events. She also dedicated herself to recovering the role of women in art, taking care of studies and exhibitions in this regard, and in parallel she had the opportunity to deepen the development of the arts in Tuscany in the last century. He has also worked extensively in the field of museum education and carried out relevant cataloging campaigns.