PARIGI WAS ALIVE. DE CHIRICO, SAVINIO AND LES ITALIENS DE PARIS

October 21, 2021 – January 30, 2022

Curated by Nicoletta Colombo and Giuliana Godio

Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Savinio, Massimo Campigli, Filippo de Pisis, René Paresce, Gino Severini, Mario Tozzi are the seven artists who redesigned the destiny of Italian painting in the Twentieth century, in that golden five-year period, which goes from 1928 to 1933, in which the French adventure of Les Italiens de Paris took place.
The exhibition returns through about seventy works the dialoguing and provocative artistic climate of a unique and unrepeatable space-time crossroads.
The story of the “Group of seven” officially begins in 1928, even if all the members have been present and operational in the Ville Lumière for some time. Their language, beyond the individual thematic and stylistic differences, is oriented towards a new dreamy Mediterranean classicism, with some surreal and neo-metaphysical inflections, in balance between the real and the fantastic, history and myth, tradition and avant-garde.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by “Parigi era viva” (“Paris was alive”), an autobiography by Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, a famous Italian writer and art critic who emigrated to Paris, in which the life and work events of Picasso, Matisse and Les Italiens are told.