Italian art of the 20th century

I N T R O D UCTiON The Exhibition of "Italian Ar t of the 20th Century," which the Rome Ar t Club presents under the auspices of the Italian Foreign Office and the Ministry for Education, is a brief panoramic survey of the most representative aspects and of most of the individual personalities of the plastic arts in Italy during the last fifty years The limit in the number of artists and works presented is a result of practical necessity and has been agreed upon between us and the Australian Art Galleries to whose initiative, together with the support of several leading newspapers, we owe the decision to send this first Italian Exhibition to be shown in the Southern Hemisphere. Some artists, even though of note, have therefore been necessarily excluded; but it is to be hoped that, on a future occasion, other aspects and exponents of our contemporary art may be presented to the Australian public After the years of transition - during the late 19th century - of the era of the "Macchiaioli Toscani" and the "Scapigliatura Lombarda" schools, our plastic arts were awakened from their romantic lethargy by the cry of alarm of the Futurists. The Futurist movement - which embraced the arts and literature - with its painting and theories, marked the birth of a new spiritual and ideological awakening, and stressed the basic principles of "Art life," of the "Life which is movement," of the Ar t which is expression of movement Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Balla and Luigi Russolo were the teachers painting and sculpture which were based dynamics Gino Severini, Giacomo and theorists of Futurist n the concept of plastic This spiritual purification and the new aesthetic conscious- ness - understood in a universal sense - was in fact the outcome of Futurist influence, and brought about a desire for freedom in Italian artistic life; this opened the door to the new ideologies The appearance of metaphysical painting in 1916-1917 by Giorgio De Chirico and Carlo Carrà was an example of the poetic return to the prevalence of "form" understood as a dream-like con- glomerate of surrealist images. Consequently, during the "Twenties," a few talented artists gained increasing renown - among them Tosi, Casorati, Carrà, Campigli, Morandi, Sironi, Funi, De Pisis; their painting was at times defined as "Novecentist," whilst actually, the so-called "Novecento"1 did not signify a specific aesthetic trend nor a definite plastic expression: each separate artist, in conclusion, was free to express himself according to his individual style and personality Today a new orientation, a new plastic language, has come to the fore after the upheaval caused by the last world conflagration. "Figurativism" and "non-figurativism," "neo-realism" and "abstrac- tionism" are now the new expressions of artistic creation; they have gained universal consensus in the artistic life of the five continents Painting and sculpture in Italy today hold a place of prime importance in the evolution of contemporary art The new generations - and not the last ones alone - have sensed the vitality and fascination of the new call that has given life to post-impressionism, neo-impressionism, neo-realism and abstract art Whether "Figurative" or "Non-figurative," our artists are decidedly setting their course towards an art that expresses the "Life of forms" To conclude, we wish to give particular thanks to the artists for their collaboration in presenting their works and also we wish to express our gratitude to the collectors who have so generously con- tributed with their loans ENRICO PRAMPOLINI President of the Art Club, Rome (1) "Novecento," i.e., "Twentieth Century". an Italian art movement which flourished between the two World Wars [ 6 ] [7]