From July 6 to November 16, 2025, the Gallerie d’Italia in Vicenza presents Vitality of Time. Arturo Martini in Intesa Sanpaolo’s art collections, a monographic exhibition dedicated to one of the greatest Italian sculptors of the 20th century. The exhibition, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, is part of the broader Vitalità del Tempo project, launched by Intesa Sanpaolo to enhance its heritage of modern and contemporary art.
The exhibition focuses on the figure of Arturo Martini (Treviso, 1889 - Milan, 1947), offering an opportunity to delve into the work of the Treviso sculptor through a selection of fourteen works belonging to different nuclei of collections that have flowed into the banking group’s artistic heritage over time. The exhibition will be on view in the spaces of the Sala dei Fauni, usually dedicated to the eighteenth century Veneto. Currently, in fact, works from this period have been temporarily transferred to Villa Vauban, in Luxembourg, for the exhibition Viaggio in Italia. Vues de Milan, Venise, Rome et Naples, 17e-19e siècles, which hosts 46 works from the Intesa Sanpaolo collection.
The core of the Vicenza exhibition consists of two versions of the sculpture La Pisana, a female figure among the most emblematic of Martini’s imagery. The first, made in plaster around 1930, is flanked by a posthumously cast bronze version, the first of six copies made with the permission of the heirs. The latter comes from the Luigi and Peppino Agrati Collection, a collection of contemporary art formed between the 1960s and 1980s and added to the Bank’s historical-artistic heritage thanks to the bequest of Cavalier Luigi Agrati.
Alongside La Pisana, the exhibition itinerary includes two cement paste sculptures depictingAllegory of the Sea andAllegory of the Earth, both dating from around 1910, which date from Martini’s early phase of activity, when he worked at Gregorio Gregory’s ceramics factory in Treviso.
Also particularly important are the eight bronze bas-reliefs dedicated to episodes in the lives of soldiers during World War I, with a tense and compositionally intense expressive language. The works are ideally connected to the Piave front, a symbolic site of the conflict, and highlight Martini’s desire to restore the drama and individual experience of the combatants.
Also notable among the works on display is the bronze sculpture depicting the Lion of Monterosso - Chimera. Although it does not fit into the iconographic canons of the mythological creature, the subject is called “Chimera” because of its conceptual connection to the Chimera of Arezzo, a famous Etruscan bronze from the fifth century B.C. The choice of the title reflects Martini’s abiding interest in Etruscan art, which has greatly influenced his formal imagery.
Closing the installation is a terracotta high relief depicting a still life, dating from the early 1920s, a period when Martini joined the Valori Plastici group. The work, characterized by an apparent compositional simplicity, is part of the phase of return to order and form that marked the overcoming of the experimental avant-gardes of the early twentieth century.
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| Arturo Martini's sculpture stars at Vicenza's Gallerie d'Italia |
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