MAON, 19th and 20th century art museum in Rende (CS)
October 13, 2017, 6:00 PM
Inauguration of the Exhibition
MAON - THE COLLECTION
20th and 21st Century Art and Calabria
curated by Bruno Corà and Tonino Sicoli
Selection of the works present in the Museum's collection, the only one to document art in Calabria over the last two hundred years.
The exhibition will remain open until November 18, 2017.
The Capizzano/MAON Center is turning twenty. To celebrate the event, on October 13, at 6:00 p.m., the exhibition “MAON / THE COLLECTION – 20th and 21st Century Art and Calabria” will open at the Museum of 19th and 20th Century Art in Rende, curated by Bruno Corà and Tonino Sicoli. The exhibition will present a selection of works from the Museum’s collection, the only one to document art in Calabria over the last two hundred years.
The exhibition will remain open until November 18, 2017. Promoted by the Calabria Region (FUC 2017), the “A. Capizzano”, from the Municipality of Rende and the Aleph Center of Lamezia Terme, the exhibition is divided into three sections: 1900 -1945 / The Historical Avant-gardes and the Italian Twentieth Century (Umberto Boccioni, Domenico Colao, Michele Guerrisi, Maria Grandinetti Mancuso, Achille Capizzano, Antonio Marasco, Enzo Benedetto); 1945-2000 / The Post-War Period and New Trends (Angelo Savelli, Mimmo Rotella, Luigi Di Sarro, Francesco Guerrieri, Aldo Turchiaro, Nunzio Solendo, Domenico Lo Russo, Francesco Lupinacci, Antonio Gatto, Luigi Magli, Francesco Correggia, Rocco Pangaro, Francomà, Max Marra, Mario Parentela, Giulio Telarico, Giuseppe Gallo, Alfredo Pirri, Pietro Perrone, Salvatore Dominelli, Cesare Berlingeri, Anna Romanello, Antonio Pujia Veneziano, Giancarlo Cauteruccio, Bruno La Vergata, Fiorenzo Zaffina; 2000-2017 / Openings on the 21st Century in the Era of Globalism (Vincenzo Paonessa, Giuseppe Negro, Ernesto Spina, Fabio Nicotera, Sebastiano Dammone Sessa, Milton Blas Verano, Vincenzo Marsiglia, Elda Longo, Antonella Rocca, Francesca Ferraiuolo).
The MAON was inaugurated on May 4, 2004 on the initiative of the “A. Capizzano” Center for Art and Culture in Rende, a cultural citadel on the outskirts of Cosenza. In turn, the Center named after the artist Achille Capizzano from Rende, was born in 1997, founded by Sandro Principe, former mayor of Rende and member of parliament. After seven years of intense exhibition activity, the Center acquired permanent collections and established the Museum, which was born from a project by the art critic Tonino Sicoli.
It is one of the few southern cultural institutions dedicated to modern and contemporary art, and is located in Palazzo Vitari (18th century), in the historic center of Rende, granted on loan for use by the municipal administration. The MAON has been recognized as a Place of Contemporary Art by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and is included in the quality museum circuits (ICOM).
The artists it deals with not only represent the best of regional cultural production but also have a recognized role in the national and often international historical and critical panorama. These are figures who also occupy roles in cultural institutions (Academies of Fine Arts, Foundations, etc.), boasting presences in prestigious exhibitions and reviews (Venice Biennale, Rome Quadrennial, Expo and international fairs, etc.), as well as in the circuits of large galleries and the most qualified collectors.
In any case, they have all been followed by the most attentive and authoritative critics with legitimacy in contemporary art circles. The MAON, a museum in an area with a penalised history and a lack of cultural institutions, today presents itself as an opportunity for redemption in terms of proactivity and event planning, bringing together over the course of these years ni the first organic and scientifically structured collection of artists, who have not suffered the consequences of socio-cultural marginalization but who have managed to earn a respectable place in the art world, initially outside the region (until the 90s) but subsequently also inside.
The new condition has gradually created relationships, initiatives, growth processes, attention, involvement, which have marked an activity of various types, from exhibitions to publishing, from teaching to dissemination. The production of exhibitions, publications, videos together with the use of information and telematic technologies have made the MAON a modern and vital museum center, with initiatives increasingly open to those sectors of artistic culture, which has linked the history of the territory to the broader context of the history of Italian and European art. The exhibition subsequently includes some stops outside the region. The highlight of the exhibition is the unpublished painting by Umberto Boccioni, Seascape with Trees, 1908, oil on canvas, 54.5 x 65 cm, a pre-futurist work, attributable to the Milanese period of the great artist, and contemporary with the paintings of the Chiattone collection preserved in the Lugano Museum.
Bruno Corà writes: "Neither time, nor the lack of resources, nor the topological condition have been able to prevail over the determination of a strong museum institution such as the MAON, which is at the turning point of its first twenty years of activity, with a considerable list of exhibitions and cultural initiatives behind it that have made it one of the bright spots of our South. The valid structure guided since the beginning by the balanced experience, not without bold proposals, of Tonino Sicoli, still director, has counted over time on the passionate attention given to it by collaborators, young interns and engagements external circumstances, which have kept it open and interested in different critical-theoretical points of view, as well as fruitful contributions for the growth of the young museum.
But, now that several decades of industrious and valid action have contributed to extending the radius of cultural influence exercised by the MAON in the region and at a national level, the time has also come to perform that reflective act regarding its roots, the artistic forces that originated in this region of Italy or have returned there or simply recognize themselves there for a belonging that sinks into the mists of time.”
