By Our Editorial Staff
An exciting new exhibition hosted at the Museo Civico Pinacoteca Crociani in Montepulciano, until 23 June 2024.
After the success of the exhibition “Futurists. Italian avant-garde”, with over 6000 admissions in just a few months, the Museo Civico Pinacoteca Crociani in Montepulciano hosts a new exhibition, also focused on the theme of collecting. It is “From Palizzi to Severini. Italian painters between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Bologna Buonsignori collection“, an exhibition promoted and organized by the ‘Società di Esecutori di Pie Disposizioni’ and the Municipality of Montepulciano, in collaboration with the ‘Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio’ for the provinces of Siena, Grosseto, Arezzo and with ‘Opera Laboratori’. The successful exhibition, after being hosted at Palazzo Piccolomini in Pienza from April 17 to October 29, 2023, will remain open until June 23, 2024.
“It is a surprising and very rich exhibition, which allows us to admire the work of many artists – from Severini to Palizzi, from Pascucci to Balestrieri, to name a few – who, going through different phases and styles, represent a significant artistic heritage of Italian painting at the turn of the 1800s and 1900s. With this exhibition we continue to invest in a cultural offer of Montepulciano that is always up-to-date and of quality, which sees the Civic Museum Pinacoteca Crociani as one of the cultural centres of reference in our city”, is the comment of the Mayor Michele Angiolini and the Councilor for Culture Lucia Musso.
The 70 works on display come from the pictorial gallery of the Bologna Buonsignori collection, donated to the ‘Società di Esecutori di Pie Disposizioni’ by Luigi and Leopoldo Bologna Buonsignori. There are, among others, paintings by Gino Severini, Filippo Palizzi, Lionello Balestrieri, Angiolo Tommasi, Giuseppe Stuart, Giuseppe Viner, Aleardo Paolucci, Paride Pascucci. The exhibition, through seventy works, including oil paintings, drawings and prints, traces a cross-section of Italian figurative culture from the Unification to post-World War II, and allows us to learn about the collecting choices of the lawyer Bologna aimed above all at testifying to the activity of painters working in the lands familiar to him of the Val d’Orcia and the lower Maremma, without however neglecting national art.
The Bologna Buonsignori collection testifies to the great passion for art of Clemente Bologna and his wife, Faustina Buonsignori Placidi, a native of Siena. The protagonist of the exhibition is the pictorial gallery composed of some paintings purchased in particular by Clemente who, although he did not consider himself an art expert, loved to frequent antique dealers and collect paintings and pieces of art – one of his main suppliers was the antiquarian of Montepulciano, Poliziano Barcucci – testifying to a predilection for archaeology and for contemporary painters, many of whom were Tuscan, linked to the territories where he lived.
Palizzi, Severini, Balestrieri, Tommasi, Stuart, Viner, Paolucci, are some of the signatures that make up the rich Bologna Buonsignori collection – now owned by the ‘Società di Esecutori di Pie Disposizioni’ of Siena – which can be admired by the public in two subsequent exhibitions: at Palazzo Piccolomini in Pienza and, later, in Montepulciano. An exhibition that allows us to admire the work of artists who, although they go through different phases and styles, represent a significant heritage of Italian painting at the turn of the 1800s and 1900s.
It is no coincidence that the collection was chosen to exhibit in Pienza and Montepulciano, given that Clemente Bologna and Faustina Buonsignori Placidi spent a good part of their lives between Palazzo Massaini, in Pienza, where they married and where their two children were born, the Montefreddo estate, an ancient post station on the border between Tuscany and Umbria, and, indeed, Montepulciano. And it is precisely in Montepulciano that Clemente, once widowed, chose to live the last years of his life at the villa owned by the “Il Comizio” family, testifying to the bond and affection he felt with our territory.
Gino Severini Before Futurism
In the collection of Bologna Buonsignori paintings there is also a double canvas with a female portrait on the front and a landscape by Dicomano on the background, referable to the early years of activity of the great master Gino Severini. It is not entirely clear the identity of the woman portrayed and whether there are any relations with the illustrious Bologna family. While, according to scholars, the View of Dicomano was certainly the first work painted on this canvas at a date; Subsequently, the artist reframed the canvas in the opposite direction to leave the neutral part available for a new work and painted the portrait on it.
Info: Museo Civico Pinacoteca Crociani (Director Roberto Longi).
Opening hours: The Museo Civico Pinacoteca Crociani is open from Monday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (last admission at 5 p.m.), closed on Tuesdays.
Where: Via Ricci 10 – 53045 Montepulciano (SI).
Contacts: Tel. +39 0578 717300; info@museocivicomontepulciano.it