MAON, Museum of 19th and 20th Century Art in Rende (CS)
July 27, 2017, 6:30 PM
EXHIBITION in ABSOLUTE FIRST EXHIBITION of the unpublished pre-futurist painting
IL BOCCIONI RITROVATO
Two trees on the seashore, 1908
oil on canvas, cm 54.5x65
with Alberto Dambruoso and Tonino Sicoli
Exceptional event at the MAON in Rende (CS) as part of the events planned to celebrate the TWENTY YEARS of the museum and the associated “A. Capizzano” (1997-2017): on July 27, 2017, at 6:30 pm, the previously unpublished painting by Umberto Boccioni, Two Trees by the Sea, 1908, oil on canvas, 54.5 x 65 cm, from an important private collection in Rome, will be exhibited to the public for the FIRST TIME.
The work will be presented by Alberto Dambruso, who curated the General Catalogue of the Founder of Futurism (Ed. Allemandi, 2016) together with the art historian Maurizio Calvesi, and by Tonino Sicoli, director of the MAON and author of several exhibitions and publications on Boccioni.
During the evening, the important volume, which collects all the artist's works, will also be presented. The documentary “Boccioni’s Return to Reggio” will also be screened, produced by RAI and curated by Marcello W. Bruno and Tonino Sicoli, with an interview with Maurizio Calvesi, filmed on the occasion of the exhibition on pre-futurist Boccioni held at the National Museum of Reggio Calabria in 1984. The film reconstructs an “impossible interview”, made with real sentences taken from the writings of Boccioni, who is played by the actor Francesco Gigliotti.
The evening confirms the privileged role that the MAON has had over the years in repeatedly dealing with Umberto Boccioni, hosting two of his important exhibitions: one curated by Enrico Crispolti and Tonino Sicoli in 2008, with 85 drawings, tempera, watercolors and engravings from the American Winston Malbin Collection, exhibited at Palazzo Vitari for over six months, on loan for use by the Superintendence of the PSAE of Calabria, before the restoration works of the National Gallery of Palazzo Arnone were completed, where they are still preserved; the other in 2009, the only exhibition in homage to Boccioni held on the Centenary of Futurism, curated by Bruno Corà, Cristina Sonderegger and Tonino Sicoli, with a text by Maurizio Calvesi, in collaboration with the Lugano Art Museum and the National Gallery of Cosenza.
In addition, the MAON has hosted other works by Boccioni during various exhibitions on Futurism, also producing a DVD on the great artist.
Two trees on the seashore
“The work can be dated to 1908, a period in which Boccioni was mainly intent on representing the countryside around Milan, the city to which he had moved at the end of 1907. Stylistically close to the painting Train passing by for the movement of the brush strokes distributed with quick touches and oblique, and for the light palette the new landscape represented with it some affinities also of subject: in both paintings you can see the presence of water in the background.
If the intent is more realistic in Treno che passa, in which the sea is dotted with sailboats, in this new landscape the sea is evoked by a blue band, darker than the color of the sky, which stands out along the horizon line. The painting also entertains affinities with the work Il ponticello in particular for the treatment of the tree branch, very similar to those we find in this new oil on canvas.” (Alberto Dambruoso, Cat. Gen. n. 1146. pag 546)
“The thin, rapid and filamentous painting is linked to various pre-futurist works in the Chiattone collection in Lugano, all works executed around 1908: The passing train, Rows of trees, Trees, Farmhouse, Peasants at work, Lombard landscape. Even the dense and full-bodied yellow layer finds close correspondences with the Countryside, attributed as a date to 1903 but more probably to 1908, due to an uncertain reading of the last number placed under the signature and after the writing Gennaio Padova (cfr. Cat. Gen., n. 51, pag 235).
Even the composition of the landscape with the horizon cut in half, an intermediate band between sky and earth, the slightly oblique trees or with the wide shaped crown recalls works such as Il Ponticello, Autunno nei dintorni di Milano and above all Campagna con mulsi (cfr. Cat. Gen. n. 47, pag 234) and some drawings such as Study of trees and urn (cfr. Cat. Gen. n. 133, pag 253) and Study of a tree with urns (cfr. Cat. Gen. n. 134, pag 253).” (Tonino Sicoli)
The work, which is being presented for the first time, is a discovery by Sicoli and Dambruoso, also subjected to diagnostic investigations carried out by an expert, which confirmed, through the technique of X-ray fluorescence, the absence of colours introduced in the 20th century. The analysis of the signature under grazing and ultraviolet light also shows that it is contemporary and that it was placed on a pictorial film that was already dry. Infrared observation reveals the lack of preparatory drawing, confirming a direct and spontaneous execution, typical of Boccioni.
