Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento Rovereto, Rovereto

It is a sort of “encyclopedic space” that brings together in a single architectural complex a Art Museum, a 20th Century Archive, a specialized Library, and an Auditorium. This is the description of the new Mart headquarters in Rovereto, designed by the famous Ticino architect Mario Botta, in collaboration with the highly regarded Trentino engineer Giulio Andreolli. Since its inauguration on December 15, 2002, the Rovereto cultural hub has become a national and international reference point in the field of research, preservation, and promotion of figurative arts of the contemporary era, from Romanticism to the present day. However, the history of Mart began fifteen years earlier, in 1987, with the establishment of a provincial museum, intended to house – in the central seat of Palazzo Albere in Trento, in the 20th Century Archive and in the Depero House-Museum in Rovereto – modern and contemporary art collections acquired over the last two centuries by the municipalities of Trento, Rovereto, and the Autonomous Province, as well as the important legacy of works and documents of Fortunato Depero (Fondo, 1892 – Rovereto, 1960), one of the leading figures of the futurist movement. Since spring 1998, Mart has preserved the prestigious Augusto and Francesca Giovanardi collection featuring masterpieces of 20th-century Italian painting – including 21 paintings by Giorgio Morandi – signed by Carlo Carrà, Mario Sironi, Massimo Campigli, Filippo De Pisis, and Osvaldo Licini. The VAF-Foundation in Frankfurt owns, instead, significant works by Carrà, De Chirico, and Casorati, also on loan. The permanent exhibition pathway showcases post-war artistic movements, from abstractionism to the experiences of the Sixties and Seventies (arte povera, minimal art, conceptual, transavanguardia), from late 20th-century art to the very latest innovations of the early 21st century.

Distinctive elements of Mart are, finally, the 20th Century Archive – housing important documentary collections of artists such as Depero, Severini, and Carrà, architects (Mazzoni, Baldessari, Sottsass, Gigiotti Zanini) and art critics like Carlo Belli and Silvio Branzi – and the Library, which holds about 60,000 volumes, including exhibition catalogs, artist biographies, dictionaries, and other book types.