Le Galleries, which are located inside Palazzo Massari, include the civic collections of the nineteenth century, the Giovanni Boldini Museum, and the museum named after Filippo de Pisis (1896-1956). The latter, set up on the ground floor, was established on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the painter from Ferrara and following the acquisition of an exceptional core of de Pisis’ works from the collection owned by Manlio Malabotta and donated to the Municipality of Ferrara by his wife Franca Fenga. It consists of twenty-four oil paintings – among which ‘Rotten Fish’ (1928), the famous ‘Struck Gladiolus’ (1930), the ‘Portrait of Allegro’ (1940), and the ‘Rose in the Bottle’ (1950) – seventy drawings, five watercolors, and fifteen engravings. The core, which increased the already existing de Pisis fund, is displayed in a dedicated section of the museum.The museum has been open to the public since 1998, in the current layout organized into monographic rooms dedicated to Ferrara artists; and with the presence of a few, but significant pieces by Carlo Carrà and Mario Sironi. The rooms document local artistic creativity of the first half of the last century, a period in which Ferrara was the nursery of interesting and incisive personalities and artistic movements, such as modernist expressionism, Metaphysics, and Novecento. There are rooms dedicated only to Aroldo Bonzagni, Achille Funi, Arrigo Minerbi, Giuseppe Virgili, Enzo Nenci, Annibale Zucchini, Mimì Quilici Buzzacchi, Aldo Bandinelli, Roberto Melli, Mario Pozzati, and Filippo de Pisis. The collection related to the latter is divided into two important cores, which document anthologically the painter’s path: the first acquired by the Giuseppe Pianori Foundation and the Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara, the second, the Manlio and Franca Calabotta collection, donated to the city by the widow of the Trieste notary. De Pisis’ poetics is clearly expressed in the rooms with works dealing with themes he favored, still lifes, and ranges from his beginnings of crepuscular metaphysical nature to French post-impressionist influences, which will lead his style to decline existential contents with increasingly abbreviated and rarefied signs; the Malabotta collection also left the museum a varied selection of the artist’s drawings, watercolors, pastels, and lithographs.
In 2004, the Ferrara City Administration presented to MusArc the Modern and Contemporary Art Hub project, designed by Massimo and Gabriella Caramassi, which envisages the logistical redistribution of artistic institutions included between Palazzo dei Diamanti, Palazzo Bevilacqua Massari, and the Palazzina dei Cavalieri di Malta with the merger, in the integrated museum system, of Palazzo Prosperi Sacrati as the future seat of the “Filippo de Pisis” Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. The space division project foresees annexing the Illustration Museum to the Hub in order to free it from the isolation of its location on via Frescobaldi and thus allow a greater number of visitors; moreover, integration of the Michelangelo Antonioni Museum and the Museum of the Risorgimento and Resistance is underway on the ground floor; finally, the Multipurpose Hall, which during the restoration period served as a temporary art storage, has now returned to functioning as a multipurpose cultural space benefiting initiatives of the City Administration and private Galleries.
The museum’s sculpture collection is mainly displayed in the interior rooms, but some works by Rita da Re, Maurizio Bonora, Man Ray, Carmelo Capello, Aldo Calò, Filippo Tallone, Augusto Murer, Emilio Greco, Marcello Mascherini, and Laura Rivalta are also located in the courtyard of Palazzo Massari. Inside the sections of the Boldini Museum and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art there are works by sculptors from the Ferrara area such as Roberto Melli, Arrigo Minerbi, Giuseppe Virgili, Annibale Zucchini; and also works by Enzo Nenci, Egidio Casarotti, and Laerte Milani. The Boldini Museum, on the occasion of the “Art Fall. Ferrara contemporary” exhibition, hosted video screenings such as “Pletora. The gift” (2008), installations such as “Manifesto” (2009), and performances such as “Kin Knight King” (2010).
Information about the “Filippo de Pisis” Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art
Corso Porta Mare, 9,
44121 Ferrara (Ferrara)
0532243415
artemoderna@comune.fe.it
https://www.artecultura.fe.it/index.phtml
Source: MIBACT
