English 
Italiano 
A common thread runs through all the exhibitions organized by the Fondazione Magnani Rocca: the one of the paintings kept in the permanent collection and that – individuals or small groups – from time to time become protagonists and surround themselves with a path of monograph study on the author.
The autumn exhibition of 2013 is dedicated to Filippo de Pisis (Ferrara, 1896 – Milan, 1956): painter who has always belonged to an international dimension, but in recent years has almost disappeared from the Italian museums scene. The “Ferrara wandering man” is back then to be talked about in Mamiano of Traversetolo, where since 1941 he dialogues with the other works by Italian and foreign artists, with a selected “best” of the twentieth century painting. That year, in fact, the owner-collector Luigi Magnani met the painter in Rome, perhaps through a shared passion for music: it was born a long term relationship that enriched the villa of paintings such as W Mozart, Interno dello Studio (Inside of the study) and Tacchino (Turkey), and in the years to follow the disturbing Gli Albatri (The Albatross) of 1946 and others.
Trained as a scholar, De Pisis began to devote himself to painting after contact with the Dadaists and the Metaphysics of De Chirico and Savino, artistic movements known in Rome during his first journey: the exhibition documents this early stage with little-known paintings in which are recognizable strong models of the young artist who at that time also discovered the atmosphere of the metropolis, the city teeming with life who paints in plein air: from this moment on one of his favorite themes, along with still lives and portraits of derelicts, poor and miserable.
De Pisis embodies “the restless spirit of a tireless traveler and wanderer: its horizons are constantly moving between Italy and France, in constant motion” (P. Campiglio), a movement that will take him from Ferrara to Rome, Paris, London, Milan, Venice, just to mention the main destinations retraced also in the show. In each one there is a different atmosphere, especially he dives in a different light that he manages to render it through a personal chromaticism and to unite it in dull tones, “bitter” and almost monochrome, touches of violent brightness.
As his style is defined, small black figures – human beings with no personality – stand directly on raw canvas, in an aura of absence of color. The light is close to that of the Impressionists, but the subject matter is different: it processes the sensory data and is permeated with a sense of mysterious and dramatic, always tended to a deep anxiety and a sense of futility. And in the last paintings, the ones that De Pisis realized after the admission to Villa Fiorita, suffering from atherosclerosis, its sign becomes incredibly close to informal.
PISIS EN DE VOYAGE
Rome Paris London Milan Venice
Fondazione Magnani Rocca
by Paolo Campiglio
September 13th to December 8th, 2013
Tuesday to Friday all day 10-18 (ticket office closes at 17)
Saturdays, Sundays and holidays all day 10-19 (ticket office closes at 18)
closed on Mondays
Entrance € 9,00 (including the permanent collections)
Info
Tel 0521 848327 / 848148
e- mail: info@magnanirocca.it
