Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale and MAMbo pay tribute to Francesco Arcangeli with many initiatives

The Pinacoteca nazionale di Bologna, MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna and the Museo Morandi of the Settore Musei Civici Bologna pay tribute to a pivotal figure in the history and criticism of twentieth-century art, Francesco Arcangeli (Bologna, 1915 - 1974), on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his death, proposing a series of initiatives dedicated to him. Francesco Arcangeli collaborated with Cesare Gnudi and Andrea Emiliani during the years of their direction of the Pinacoteca and was director of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna (now MAMbo) from 1958 to 1968. The entire project aims to reflect his idea of continuity between the art of the past and the present. The series of initiatives is titled Tramando and refers to a key word in Arcangeli’s critical vision. Tramando is for him a hidden thread of thought, of an unconscious affinity of worldview, that binds different artists in time and space and allows us to find common denominators. It is the tradition in which one is born and walks and which we will leave to the generations to follow.

The shared program will include paths within the collections, a reading group, an exhibition and a lecture series. The first scheduled meeting will be held in the Pinacoteca, where Jadranka Bentini, president of the Fondazione Zucchelli and former Superintendent for Artistic and Historical Heritage for the provinces of Bologna, Ferrara, Forlì-Cesena, Ravenna and Rimini, will lead a reading group during which four key texts by Arcangeli, written between 1952 and 1963, each dedicated to specific themes and personalities, will be read. The meetings begin Thursday, May 9, 2024, reservations open today, May 3 by writing to pin-bo.urp@cultura.gov.it.

The heart of the joint project will be a single visit itinerary articulated among the three museum venues that will focus on the artists to whom Arcangeli devoted his studies and attention. The Pinacoteca Nazionale will propose an itinerary focused on the works and artists of the exhibition Natura ed espressione presented at the Archiginnasio in 1970. At MAMbo, three works will be singled out, among the many acquired by Arcangeli during his tenure as director of GAM, to which will be associated some of his excerpts from presentations and essays. At the Museo Morandi seven paintings and thirteen etchings from the collection will be accompanied by commentaries and interpretations taken mainly from the 1964 monograph devoted to the Bolognese artist. The itinerary will be presented to the press on Thursday, May 23. From the same day it will be open to the public until January 6, 2025. A series of lectures will then be dedicated to the figure of the great art historian, opening at the Pinacoteca on May 29, 2024, with a meeting focusing on Arcangeli’s relationship with the museum on Via Belle Arti, held by Mirella Cavalli, an art historian official in charge of the Pinacoteca’s collections. Linking the schedules of the three museums will be the lecture Sul Tramando, given by Elena Volpato, conservator and curator at GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino, and set at the Pinacoteca on September 18, 2024.

In the second part of the year, MAMbo and Museo Morandi will open a Project Room exhibition dedicated to Francesco Arcangeli’s acquisitions for the Gallery of Modern Art. MAMbo will offer a selection of works that have not been exhibited for some time, pertaining particularly to informal art, while Museo Morandi will present eight works donated by Morandi in 1961 to the Gallery of Modern Art.

The program at the Pinacoteca

1. TRAMANDO.

Francesco Arcangeli. Conversations in prose

curated by Jadranka Bentini

A reading group open to a maximum of 30 people by reservation will take place over the course of four appointments marked weekly. The meetings will be held in the Gnudi Room of the Pinacoteca at 5 p.m.

A selection of essays written between 1952 and 1963 on specific themes and personalities will be offered.

Registration for the four meetings opens today, May 3, 2024, by writing to pin-bo.urp@cultura.gov.it.

“Francesco Arcangeli,” explains Jadranka Bentini, “can be considered a complementary teacher to Roberto Longhi during the years of his teaching at the chair of art history at the University of Bologna. There is no limit to the intuitive genius of Arcangeli who unveiled the work of art through research in which the emotional component plays an important role, translating it into prose of authentic pathos without distinction between criticism and poetry. ’A poet in verse and prose, always, Francesco Arcangeli, of dense but at times resplendent colors, of rhythms at once serious (not placid) and free, open, as it were, lit,’ his friend Attilio Bertolucci would say of him, referring also to his pages of art criticism. Arcangeli’s language, as has been rightly pointed out, is characterized by ease of synaesthesia, that is, ’by interaction of words concerning several sensory planes,’ as Andrea Emiliani wrote.”

The meetings: Thursday, May 9, 2024: Exhibition of 17th century painting in Rimini, Reprint Series no.° 2, Edizioni Alfa, 1982; Tuesday, May 14, 2024: Il Bastianino, Cassa di Risparmio di Ferrara, Ferrara 1963; Thursday, May 30, 2024: Una gloriosa gara (L’oratorio di San Colombano), Reports of the Superintendency, New Series, Minerva ed. No. 4, 2002; Tuesday, June 4, 2024: Monet, series Rapporti della Soprintendenza, No. 60, Nuova Alfa Edizioni, Bologna, 1989.

2. TRAMANDO.

Nature and Expressionin the works of the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Bologna

Curated by Maria Luisa Pacelli with the collaboration of Grazia Agostini

May 23, 2024 - January 6, 2025

An itinerary within the museum that focuses on the works and artists chosen by Arcangeli for the exhibition Nature and Expression held as part of the Biennali di Arte Antica at the Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio in 1970. In this exhibition Arcangeli outlines an interpretation of Emilian and Bolognese art, which has become inescapable from then on, that privileges its more expressive and popular component, founded on a remote peasant root in a total “relationship, equally remote and unreflected, with the world of nature.” The itinerary in the Pinacoteca winds its way from Vitale da Bologna to Giorgio Morandi who is present with one of the paintings shown in the 1970 exhibition and now on loan to the Museo Morandi. The works will be recognizable thanks to special captions placed for the occasion.

3. TRAMANDO

Lectures

May 29, 2024: Arcangeli and the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna - a tale through the documents in the museum’s archives, lecture given by Mirella Cavalli.

Sept. 18, 2024: On Tramando, lecture given by Elena Volpato.

The program at MAMbo and the Morandi Museum.

1. TRAMANDO.

Francesco Arcangeli between the Pinacoteca Nazionale and the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Bologna

curated by Lorenza Selleri and Uliana Zanetti

May 23, 2024 - January 6, 2025

Within the MAMbo collections, visitors will be able to read, alongside some of the works acquired by Francesco Arcangeli for the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna di Bologna during the years of his direction, excerpts from his presentations and essays, while in the Museo Morandi several paintings and engravings will be accompanied by commentaries taken mainly from his important monograph dedicated to the Bolognese artist. The selection of texts is intended to bring the audience closer to the originality of Arcangeli’s approach to reading and interpreting artistic phenomena, as well as to the literary qualities of his writing.

2. TRAMANDO.

Arcangeli’s acquisitions for the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Bologna.

Curated by Uliana Zanetti in collaboration with Lorenza Selleri

Oct. 24, 2024-Jan. 6, 2025

The exhibition, set up in MAMbo’s Project Room, will present a selection of works that came to the Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna di Bologna at the suggestion of Francesco Arcangeli or during the years of his direction, during which the critic was primarily committed to enriching the collections.As he himself wrote in the introduction to the catalog of new acquisitions published in 1963, in fact:“The activity of acquiring and increasing the artistic patrimony, and the consequent possibility for the public to benefit from direct documents (the most numerous and at a time selected that is possible) of modern and contemporary art, remains, in my opinion, the main purpose of my work as art historian and critic called to direct the Gallery of Modern Art of my city.” With the limited funds that the Municipality of Bologna could make available, Arcangeli strove to pursue “goals” that he himself emphasized: “one local; one of national significance; one, if possible, of enlargement to the international field. Where it is borne in mind that the Municipal Gallery is the only one in Bologna devoted to modern and contemporary art, I think none of these goals is to be neglected. The most ineradicable and specific goal is, of course, the documentation of Bolognese art.”

Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale and MAMbo pay tribute to Francesco Arcangeli with many initiatives

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