press release
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november 29, 2017 - Museo Man Nuoro
An Abstract Vision - Works from the Maria Cernuschi Ghiringhelli Collection at Museo Man
The MAN Museum is pleased to announce the forthcoming inauguration of the exhibition Una visione astratta. Works from the Maria Cernuschi Ghiringhelli Collection, curated by Ilaria Bonacossa and Francesca Serrati, with a selection of over seventy works from the Museo di Villa Croce in Genoa.
Starting from the principal masterpieces of Italian abstract art of the 1930s, going on to the perceptivist and preconceptual research of the 1960s, and up to the optical and New Painting of the 1970s and 80s, the exhibition follows the development of the collection in a dialogue with the main artistic movements of twentieth-century Italian art represented by some of its undisputed protagonists.
Maria Cernuschi Ghiringhelli was a unique figure in the panorama of Italian art between the two wars. Considered the ‘abstract muse’ of Carlo Belli and Osvaldo Licini at the beginning of the 1930s, Maria Cernuschi became an enthusiastic follower of Italian and international abstract art. She succeeded in spotting the most innovative proposals with a prodigious autonomy of judgement. An Italian ’Peggy Guggenheim’ capable of maintaining relations with the artists, even the young ones not yet acknowledged, whose work she considered interesting since, as she stated, “What has always interested me is to follow, and if possible encourage, the developments of a kind of artistic research that I believe in."
Maria Cernuschi's encounter with art surely came about thanks to her husband, Gino Ghiringhelli, an artist and owner of the Il MilioneGallery in Milan, a fundamental venue for the promotion of abstract art in Italy. In 1934 and 1935, the gallery presented works by artists such as Kandinsky, Vordemberge-Gildewart, Albers, Fontana, Licini and Melotti, and hosted the first exhibitions of the artists Soldati, Radice, Rho and Veronesi. In 1933, the gallery sponsored the publication of Kn, an essay of art criticism that Carlo Belli dedicated to Maria Cernuschi Ghiringhelli, and which Kandinsky defined as “the gospel of abstract art”.
In 1940, the year of the separation from her husband, Maria Cernuschi began purchasing a series of paintings that became a testimonial to a new period in her life. This emphasized that hers was a sentimental exercise rather than a rational and documentary choice. This led her to define her acquisitions not as a ‘collection’, but simply as ’my paintings’. In 1950, weary of the atmosphere in Milan, she moved to Liguria, where she found a new climate that was culturally alive thanks to the presence of a large group of artists active in the ceramics studios in Albisola. Starting from 1965, her acquisitions became more and more frequent and the choices more meticulous, since the collection had gone beyond the private sphere and become an organized documentation of contemporary artistic research which, in the 1970s, led to attention being focused on such research in Liguria.
Maria Cernuschi Ghiringhelli succeeded in recognizing the elements of novelty and interest in a certain research without waiting for consecration by the critics or the market; her choices inevitably influenced the collection of works of art in Liguria.
This testimonial of quality can be seen in her purchase of one of the very first Achromes by Piero Manzoni (1958) and some of Agostino Bonalumi's early projects. Both artists are present in the exhibition. The far-sightedness of her choices was also certainly assisted and supported by her close and never interrupted relationship with the artistic generations active prior to the war, represented by Fausto Melotti, Mario Soldati, Bruno Munari, and Lucio Fontana.
We can say that the true beauty of private collections lies in a personal partiality that derives from occasions, choices and possibilities. That of Maria Cernuschi is undoubtedly a collection in which the absences and presences are not dictated by critical evaluations but rather by a sharing of perceptions and personal affinities. The strength of this collection lies not only in the artistic value of the works it contains, but above all in the timeliness of the choices. Believing in Lucio Fontana and Osvaldo Licini in 1935, or in Piero Manzoni in 1958, is not like believing in them today. It is extremely difficult to find on the market, for example, a Gino Ghiringhelli of 1934 or a Bruno Munari of 1937.
“Una visione astratta. Opere dalla Collezione Maria Cernuschi Ghiringhelli” presents to the public the core of this private collection representative of a fundamental historical and artistic period, but also a reflection of the personal experiences, choices, initiatives, and sentiments of its creator, since "an art collection can reflect consecrated values or be an instrument for discovering of new ones”.
An Abstract Vision
Works from the Maria Cernuschi Ghiringhelli Collection
01.12.2017 - 25.02.2018
#museoman - Nuoro
www.museoman.it
Mazzon-Fantasie-colorate-1949-Coll.-Maria-CERNUSCHI-GHIRINGHELLI.
1181x1654, 309KB
Fontana-uovo-nero-orizzontale 1968-Courtesy-Museo-Villa-Croce-Genova.
1181x810, 135KB
CONSAGRA-pietro colloquiocolvento 1962 Courtesy-Museo-Villa-Croce-Genova.
1181x788, 117KB
COLLA-ettore -rilievo-rosso-con-astas-verticale 1966 Courtesy-Museo-Villa-Croce-Genova.
1181x902, 141KB
Claudio-Olivieri-Autocromia-1971 Collezione-Maria-Cernuschi-Ghiringhelli Courtesy-Museo-Villa-Croce-Genova.
1181x1481, 114KB
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