Founded in 1872 by the will of Baron Pasquale Revoltella, one of the most representative figures of imperial Trieste, who in his will decided to leave his palace and his vast art collection to the city, the Revoltella Museum is the oldest public gallery in Italy specifically dedicated to modern art. “A building of artistic merit, – in the words of the Baron himself – which serves to embellish the city and spur to cultivate the fine arts”.
From the very beginning, in designing his prestigious home, Revoltella revealed a clear propensity for the “representative force of sculpture” and through a thoughtful program of sculptural decorations he created a real training course, able to tell, at the same time, the history of Trieste and the role of culture in the progress of society.
The continuous increase of the artistic heritage, from 1872 to today, and a policy of acquisitions aimed, from the beginning, to equally document local, Italian and foreign production, make the Revoltella Museum one of the most important references for modern art and Contemporary.
As part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of its foundationthe Museum proposes, starting from 3 November 2022, the large exhibition “Sculpture in the collections of the Revoltella Museum. From Canova to the 21st century “, a rich and multifaceted itinerary that enhances the extraordinary sculptural collection kept by the Museum (which counts over 200 pieces). On display about sixty works in marble, stone, bronze, terracotta, wax, ceramic, wood and fabric, representative of the artistic developments of the Italian and European territory from the early nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, some of which are unpublished.
“On this important and historic anniversary – he says Giorgio Rossi, Councilor for Culture and Tourism Policies – the Municipality of Trieste wanted honor the figure of the founder of the Museum, Pasquale Revoltella, Venetian by birth but Triestine by adoption, who gave our city his luxurious home and the rich historical-artistic heritage it contains. In a phase of vital and general tourist-cultural recoverywhich is reviving our city and, more generally, our region, we are also witnessing a prompt and massive response from visitors who, very numerous, attend our many museums, interested in learning about the extraordinary historical-artistic heritage- culture that characterizes them and that makes them unique and deeply linked to our territory “.
The evocative exhibition itinerary winds through the six floors of the Museum and provides for a substantial rearrangement of some sections of the permanent exhibition.
“The exhibition, accompanied by the catalog of works, is an ambitious and fascinating project, – he underlines Susanna Gregorat, Curator of the Revoltella Museum and curator of the exhibition – which had already been thought about for some years. Far more demanding than a painting exhibition, by virtue of the many difficulties posed by the handling of the works, even of impressive dimensions, a sculpture exhibition nevertheless favors a close and exciting contact with the works, experienced in all their three-dimensional physicality. An authentic challenge aimed at re-reading the works in new or renewed exhibition contexts, for a more in-depth knowledge of them and for an approach of more intense involvement of the observer ”.
To welcome the visitor in the atrium of the Museum is the Goddess Rome (1950), colossal plaster sculpture by the Trieste artist Attilio Selva, restored for the occasion and presented to the public for the first time.
Donated to the Museum in 1965 by the Graduates Association of the University of Trieste, the work was commissioned to the artist – already known in the city for the flagpoles of Piazza Unità, the Monument to the Fallen in Piazzale di S. Giusto and the one in Guglielmo Oberdan at the Casa del Combattente – for the inauguration of the new university and to be located in the square in front of the university, but at the Goddess Rome was preferred Minerva by Marcello Mascherini.
“Sculpture as a program of life” is the title of the section dedicated to Pietro Magni and the sculptors of the palace. The decorative apparatus of the house, in fact, enhances the sciences and the arts as factors of economic development, reflecting – in line with the positivist culture of his time – the thought and action of Revoltella.
The Baron commissioned one of the major protagonists of the Milan School, Pietro Magni, a spectacular decorative cycle divided into massive sculptural groups, placed in the most visible points of the building: the allegorical group in marble of the Nymph Aurisinabuilt to celebrate the new aqueduct of Trieste – which replaced the Teresian one, now insufficient for the needs of the nineteenth-century city – and the imposing allegorical group of Cutting of the Isthmus of Suez, representation of the most ambitious project of the Baron, one of the first shareholders of this great company. Magni’s work is anticipated, at the beginning of the itinerary, by the two versions of Portrait of Pasquale Revoltellatwo busts in plaster and marble, placed side by side for the first time.
The section dedicated to the Classicism of the early nineteenth century and to sculpture in the Napoleonic era includes the works of Canova, Houdon and Bartoliniamong the first acquisitions of sculpture made after the establishment of the Museum: Portrait of Prince Felice Baciocchia marble work by the Tuscan sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini, innovator of neoclassical academicism in a naturalistic sense and official portraitist of the Bonaparte family; Napoleon I, plaster bust of the French Jean Antoine Houdon; and the important plaster sketch by Antonio Canova, the most famous sculptor of the neoclassical period, for the monumental statue of Napoleon I as the peacemaker Mars.
One section is entirely dedicated to the work of Marcello Mascherinia charismatic artist of great vitality, who also played a decisive role in the long history of the Museum, as an active and decisive component of the Curatory.
The Museum owns Mascherini about fifteen sculptures of great valuebecome part of the collection thanks to significant purchases and donations, which are able to tell the different creative phases of one of the protagonists of the Italian art scene of the first half of the twentieth century. From the suggestive bronzes (Flight of the lark, Ecstasy, Bacchante, Musician And Icarus) to the mighty Beethoven (1920s); from the vigorous Self portrait to the monumental group of the Siren; from Eva (1939), among the most significant sculptures of the entire collection up to the extraordinary Spring awakening, a work of 1954 that highlights the expressive novelties of his sculpture, essential and geometric, through visibly elongated shapes. The splendid exhibition opens in the atrium on the ground floor Rampant horse (About 1962).
The hall of the Museum dominated by the two imposing plaster sculptures by Leonardo Bistolfi – Funeral of the Virgin And The cross – is completely rearranged to give back, through the exhibition of over twenty works created between the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesthe richness and variety of Revoltella’s sculptural collection.
The sculptures of local artists are deliberately compared in the interpretation of the female figure such as Ruggero Rovan, Franco Asco, Mario Ceconi of Montececon, Gianni Marin and Giovanni Mayer they dialogue with those of some masterful interpreters of late nineteenth-century Verismo, such as Donato Barcaglia and Andrea Malfatti. The feminine image, idealized and suspended between spirituality and formal perfection, recurs instead in the ethereal Dream of Spring by Pietro Canonica and in the enigmatic face of Virgin by Adolfo Wildt, here side by side.
One of the most important works in the Museum’s collection is the Gavroche (About 1883) by Medardo Rossothe greatest Italian sculptor of the second half of the nineteenth century, an artist of exceptional modernity who, starting from the disheveled Lombard tradition, moved to Paris and dialogued with artists and intellectuals of the caliber of Rodin and Zola.
As part of the section dedicated to the Italian masterpieces of the twentieth century The sketch divided into four sculptures is prepared for the occasion Arturo Martini presented in the 1934 competition for the monument to Emanuele Filiberto Duca d’Aosta.
In the dramatic years of the Second World War, the Revoltella Museum did not give up, as far as possible, to increase its collections, looking at the national artistic production and that of the territory at the same time.
Starting from 1948, the year in which the 24th Venice Biennale marked the resumption of national artistic life, “one of the most fervent and constructive phases” in the history of the Museum began, marked by the purchase of works of great value, including Child with duck from Giacomo Manzù, The portrait of Carlo Carrà from Marino Marini, Portrait from Emilio Greco and the Caryatid in plaster of Alberto Viani.
At the 1960 Venice Biennale, interest in sculpture materialized in the purchase of a series of works, representative of the informal languageby Augusto Perez, Quinto Ghermandi and Agenore Fabbri, while in the years immediately following the sculpture of Dino Basaldella Tributethe Sphere n. 4 from Arnaldo Pomodoro and the bronze work Concentric motif from Mirko Basaldella. They are acquisitions of the seventies, however, the gigantic Red high priest by Mirko Basaldella and the opera BaroKo by the Trieste artist Bruno Chersicla.
Among the most recent sculptures, from the 1980s to the early 2000s, he stands out Solid-Speech Puzzle. Keyword: Weavingthe work of the Trieste artist Lydia Predominato, representative of the so-called Fiber Art or Soft Sculpture: an incredible oversized puzzle composed of 28 modular pieces, acquired in 2020. The work of Predominato, the result of a fascinating mix of technology and craftsmanship, 150 years after the beginning of the long history of the Revoltella Museum, expresses the conception of art of its founder: a look at technology and “modernity”, never separated from the skilful craftsmanship and a very refined aesthetic sense.
In support of the exhibition, the publication of the scientific catalog of the entire collection. A precious volume, edited by Susanna Gregorat and Barbara Coslovichwhich collects two hundred detailed information sheets of as many sculptures (including those that are part of the exhibition) and documents one of the most valuable and consistent sections of the entire patrimony of the Revoltella Museum.
Also i significant restoration interventions, carried out for the occasion together with the local Superintendency. A great cultural and economic investment by the Municipality of Trieste for “its” Revoltella Museum, which sees renewed spaces and installations and brought to light and restored works long hidden in the deposits.
A real gift to the city that everyone, from Trieste and abroad, is invited to admire on the occasion of theOpening Day of November 3, the Patron Saint’s Day. From 13.00 and until 21.00 the exhibition and the Museum can be visited free of charge.
The exhibition can be visited until April 25, 2023 with the following timetable: every day, except Tuesdays, from 09.00 to 19.00. The ticket is included in the entrance ticket to the Museum (full € 7.00 / reduced € 5.00).