The exhibition Tra sogno e realtà. Ottocento e Novecento dalle collezioni del Museo Civico della Città di Bellinzona will be opening today, September 3rd, at the Società per le Belle Arti ed Esposizione Permanente in Milan, Italy. The show, curated by Carole Haensler Huguet, looks to the unique collection of the Museum Villa dei Cedri, in Bellinzona Switzerland. Formed in only 1971, the holdings of the museum came entirely from the collection of the banker Adolfo Rossi (1890-1973). He had built up a body of about 73 artworks by northern Italian and Swiss artists working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The exhibition looks to understand this trans-alpine collection through two dominant themes: landscape painting and portraiture. The first includes mainly works in Naturalist and Symbolist styles, but also incorporates some postwar abstract landscapes. The second reveals how portraiture has evolved from striking realist representations by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Cesare Tallone and Gaetano Previati to existential and dramatic renditions by Renzo Ferrari or Cesare Lucchini. This show is on view until October 11, 2015.
Emilio Longoni. Iceberg, 1910-1912, Oil on canvas
Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Study of a Head, 1889, Oil on canvas
Fausto Agnelli, Knight and Fairies, 1909-1929, Oil on canvas