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For the first time a collection presents some forty works by leading artists working in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century. Created for the exhibition held in Villa Panza – the eighteenth century villa owned by the FAI in Varese – the catalogue is a showcase for the important Gian Ferrari Collection that includes some key pieces of Italian art. The collection is the result of many generations of activity in the field of modern Italian art. Ettore Gian Ferrari began working as an art dealer in Milan and came into contact with those artists – at the time they were “almost his age” – whose works today comprise the main core of the collection. As a result of his work the collection now constitutes an overview of modern Italian art from the 1920s to the 1950s.

The works include the huge Famiglia del pescatore (1929) by Mario Sironi, the very rare Compenetrazione iridescente (1913) by Giacomo Balla, the famous sculpture L’amante morta (1921) by Arturo Martini, and also works by Giorgio De Chirico, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio Morandi, Marino Marini, Massimo Campigli, Gino Rossi, Filippo De Pisis, Achille Funi, Gino Severini, Fausto Pirandello and Adolfo Wildt. These works demonstrate the greatness of Italian art in the first fifty years or so of the twentieth century. There is a special focus on examples of figurative tendencies in the various artistic movements, which Gian Ferrari was particularly keen to find and purchase.
The catalogue comprises a contribution by Antonello Negri and an interview by Francesca Bonazzoli with Claudia Gian Ferrari: these add to a fuller understanding of the cultural and artistic environment in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century.

Varese, Villa e Collezione Panza
12 October 2006 – 18 February 2007

The volume is available at the bookstore in via Torino 61, Milan and from November 22 2006 in all Italian bookshops.