The Palazzo Reale is hosting, from 10th March to 24th June 2007, the exhibition,
"Kandinsky and abstractionism in Italy, 1930 - 1950," supervised by Luciano Caramel.
This has been promoted by the Assessorato alla Cultura del Comune di Milano,
in collaboration with the Antonio Mazzotta Foundation. The event has also enjoyed the support of other important bodies, including Vodafone Italia and The Westin Palace.
Weisse Zickzacks, 1922, Oil, 95x125 cm
11 th January 1947 also at the Palazzo Reale in Milan another great exhibition, Abstract and Concrete Art, was opening: the first big exhibition in Europe after the war, where Kandinsky was one of the European masters represented, along with the Italians Bassi, Bonini, Licini,Mazzon, Munari, Rho Ettore Sottsass and Veronesi. The exhibition stimulated a debate on abstractionism, opposed to realism which was then very much in vogue in Italy. After exactly 60 years the Comune di Milano wishes to pay homage with this exhibition to the great Russian artist and at the same time analyse and demonstrate its strong connections with abstract art in Italy between 1930 and 1950.
Wassily Kandinsky (Moscow 1866 - Neuilly-sur-Seine/Paris 1944) was a foundamental reference point for abstract art in the Thirties (particularly between 1934 and 1935) and Forties (especially between 1947 and 1950) , up to the beginning of the Fifties, though his relationship with Italy and Italian art was sporadic, like his travels.
For the first time an exhibition reconstructs this link through an extraordinary nucleus of 42 works (oil on canvas, waterclours and pastels), executed during the years of his teaching at the Bauhaus, up to its closure in 1933, and the during the Paris period, up to his death in 1944.
(left) Composizione VII, 1913, Oil, cm. 200x300
(right) Mauro Reggiani Composizione n. 3, 1935,Oil, cm 53x85
The the first exhibit is the work Composizione VII of 1913 coming from the Tretjakov Gallery in Moscow. A masterpiece of the Monaco years, the painting is the peak of his thought and all that is to follow. This monumental painting, which is enigmatic, complex, and apparently chaotic has, in fact, a strong inner equilibrium of form and colour. It is a cornerstone, absolutely essential for the exhibition which retraces the steps of the artist in the second part of his life.
Bruno Munari, Un punto azzurro, 1937,Oil, cm 43x43
The supervisor Luciano Caramel has wished to plot the artistic itinerary making use of two exhibitions that have marked the history of the knowledge of the artist in Italy in the Thirties and Forties: that at the Galleria del Milione in 1934 at Milan (where Kandinsky presents, for the first time in Italy, 45 watercolours and 30 drawings done between 1924 and 1933) and the retrospective exhibition at the Biennal of 1950, based essentially on the collection of Nina Kandinsky.
In speaking of these two exhibitions we may clarify the basis of the "Kandinsky phenomenon" in Italy, and also the approach to two moments of the basic Kandinsky, like the Bauhaus decade and the following Paris period.
The formal language developed by Kandinsky at the beginning of the twenties through the use of geometrical forms which substitute the recurrent elements during the period of Blaue Teiter (horses and riders, boats, troike, mountains and Kreml), is in fact crucial for his reputation in Italy, no less than his passionate lesson on colour, developed in "The Spiritual in Art".
The influence of abstract Italian art in the twenty years between 1930 and 1950 is clearly seen in the exhibition of about 170 works of 52 different artists, divided into two main parts and various subsections:the first part is about the Thirties and the early Forties while the second part concerns the latter half of the Forties and the early Fifties.
