In the twentieth century

Wednesday 21 January at 5.30p.m: 

Desdemona Ventroni, Florence 70s. Alberto Moretti and the Schema Gallery

In the Florence of the seventies, Alberto Moretti confronts the theories of his philosopher friend Ermanno Migliorini and critics Lara-Vinca Masini and Achille Bonito Oliva, uses the camera and the camera, developing his work in a conceptual sense, philosophical and anthropological, with political and sociological implications up to the elaboration of a “work as art”, attested in the installation Ideology as Techne at the Venice Biennale in 1978. The subsequent return to painting coincides with the first reconstruction of his artistic career in the exhibition Alberto Moretti. Made in Florence (1983) at the Sala d’Arme in Palazzo Vecchio. Alberto Moretti (Carmignano, 1922 – 2012) was one of the protagonists of the Florentine artistic scene in the second half of the twentieth century. Starting from abstract-geometric pictorial experiences he went through the informal season, he attempted a synthesis between gestural painting and New Dada assembly before turning to a Pop figuration, to the realization of “primary structures” and drawings-projects presented by Achille Bonito Oliva like Frontal Signs (1969). Open to dialogue with other artists, gallery owners, critics and scholars, in the seventies Moretti founded and led the historic Schema Gallery together with Roberto Cesaroni Venanzi and Raul Dominguez, making it the hub of international and interdisciplinary experiences, from radical architecture to conceptual art, from Body Art to Happening, from theoretical and critical reflection to artistic and musical Performance.

Wednesday 28 January at 5.30p.m:

Chiara Toti, Collections and collectors at the origins of the Museo Novecento

The original collection on which the Museo Novecento has grown over time is due to the initiative of the historian and art critic Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti who, in the aftermath of the flood of 1966, starts intense negotiations with the main Italian collectors for the donation of their collections to the establishment of the International Museum of Contemporary Art (M.I.A.C.). According to the critic, the project was to compensate the city of Florence for the losses suffered. The definition of those agreements – all based on a solid network of personal friendships – has however had mixed results: if on the one hand in fact that operation has led to the acquisition of the collection of Alberto Della Ragione, on the other hand has never seen come to definition other negotiations including those with collectors Emilio Jesi and Gianni Mattioli.

Curated by Valentina Gensini