Complesso Museale Santa Maria della Scala

An unprecedented journey among the masterpieces of twentieth-century Italian art: two contemporary art collections open to the public for the first time.

From the vaults of the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and from the prized collection of Cesare Brandi, the works of great artists arrive at the Santa Maria della Scala: Carrà, Guttuso, Sironi, Donghi, De Pisis, Burri, Severini, Campigli, Morandi, Rosai, Viani, Levi, Mafai, Manzù, Marini, Afro, Scialoja, Turcato and many others.

The exhibition, curated by Luca Quattrocchi, traces an unprecedented “constellation” through Italian art from the years of the Great War to the early Sixties: from “Novecento” to Déco, from “Italiens de Paris” to propaganda art fascist, from the Roman School to realism, abstraction and informalism.

The Monte dei Paschi di Siena Collection and the Brandi Collection preserve authentic masterpieces from this half century: many works are presented here for the first time to the public, in a close dialogue that distills Italian artistic experiences in the short century. Not only that: together with the great names of Italian art of the 20th century, a selected group of Sienese and Tuscan artists is also exhibited: an open and surprising dialogue.

Art interprets a magmatic, torn, torn, burned, dynamic century: a century of great transformation that emerges and resurfaces among the chosen works. In many of them a central theme emerges: the human body and its movement, gestures. It is not only the movement of the soul, of the emotions, but also the physical one, of the body: a body often in action, in uncertain movement towards the uncertainties of the short century.