Named after the famous archbishop of Bologna, Giacomo Lercaro, the Foundation holds an important collection of modern art that was formed in the early 1970s thanks to the initiative of a group of Bolognese painters and sculptors—Ilario Rossi, Pompilio Mandelli, Enzo Pasquini, and Aldo Borgonzoni—who donated the first set of paintings and sculptures to the Cardinal on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. Since his passing, the Foundation has continued to acquire artworks (paintings, sculptures, ceramics, graphic works) through donations, with the aim of perpetuating the high spiritual, social, ethical, and aesthetic values that Lercaro identified in contemporary art, especially in sculpture, which makes up the largest part of the collection. From the early 1970s to today, the collection has been curated by Elva Bonzagni Poggi, Franco Solmi, and Marilena Pasquali in collaboration with President Mons. Arnaldo Fraccaroli. Open to the public since 1989, in May 2003 it moved from its original home at Villa San Giacomo, owned by the Opera Diocesana “Madonna della Fiducia”, to its new home within the recently restored building that houses the Istituto Veritatis Splendor, adjacent to the Cineteca and MAMBo, inside the cultural hub of the Manifattura delle Arti. The collection features hundreds of works representative of the national artistic scene of the 20th century, along with some significant international names: Manzù, Morandi, Marini, Martini, Moore, Giacometti, Ernst, and Matta. The collection consists of around 700 works—paintings, sculptures, drawings, and graphics—by artists who worked throughout the 20th century in various artistic approaches, just to name the major ones: from figurative realism and Novecento to Informalism, from abstract-concrete art to Spatialism, from Modernism to Postmodernism, from Surrealism to Conceptual art, with works by Medardo Rosso, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Adolfo Wildt, Carlo Corsi, Pietro Dodero, Pietro Melandri, Ercole Drei, Aroldo Bonzagni, Giorgio de Chirico, Arturo Martini, Giorgio Morandi, Virgilio Guidi, Michele Cascella, Severo Pozzati, Luciano Baldessari, Nino Corazza, Henry Moore, Mino Maccari, Francesco Messina, Marino Marini, Bruno Saetti, Giovanni Korompay, Alberto Viani, Giacomo Manzù, Mirko (Balsadella), Corrado Cagli, Toni Benetton, Luciano Minguzzi, Pietro Annigoni, Angelo Biancini, Vittorio Magelli, Renato Guttuso, Aligi Sassu, Bruno Cassinari, Piero Giunni, Giovanni Ciangottini, Ivo Tartarini, Guidone Romagnoli, Pericle Fazzini, Antonio Mazzotti, Gastone Breddo, Quinto Ghermandi, Nello Leonardi, Remo Brindisi, Gino Covili, Ernesto Treccani, Giuseppe Ferrari, Raimondo Rimondi, Vasco Bendini, Mario Nanni, Dino Boschi, Pirro Cuniberti, Sergio Vacchi, Germano Sartelli, Arnaldo and Giò Pomodoro, Carlo Zauli, Mario Bocchini, Sergio Romiti, Luciano De Vita, Floriano Bodini, Simon Benetton, Concetto Pozzati, Richard Hesse, Ivo Sassi, Carlo Santachiara, Davide Scarabelli, Enrico Mulazzani, Fabrizio Passarella, Bianca Rosa Arcangeli (Rosalba), Alberto Giacometti, Roberto Sebastian Matta, Jean Michel Folon, and Lucio Fontana. The permanent exhibition, spread over two floors, is complemented by a hall for temporary exhibitions, one for conferences, and a library with more than ten thousand art books. Temporary exhibitions also take place at the Lercaro Collection, among which are worth mentioning: “Georges Rouault. The Night of Redemption. Prints and Drawings” and “Giovanni Poggeschi. Seeing the Things of the World” in 2010, and “In the Light of the Cross. Ancient and Contemporary Art in Comparison” in 2011.
Information about the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Raccolta Lercaro
Via Riva Reno, 57,
40121 Bologna (Bologna)
0512966120
segreteria@fondazionelercaro.it
Source: MIBACT
