Bagnacavallo’s Museo Civico delle Cappuccine hosts from Sept. 21, 2025, to Jan. 11, 2026, in theformer Convento di San Francesco building-allotted for contemporary art exhibitions-the first installment of a wide-ranging exhibition project dedicated to Mattia Moreni, among the greatest Italian painters of the 20th century. The initiative involves five major museums in Romagna and pays tribute to an artist from Pavia by birth, from Turin by training, but deeply tied to this Romagna area throughout his life.
The project, entitled Mattia Moreni. From Formation to The Last Gasp Before the Great Mutation, curated by Claudio Spadoni, kicks off in Bagnacavallo with the exhibition Dagli esordi ai cartelli. The itinerary explores the artist’s first two decades of activity, documenting his evolution from his youthful years-already appreciated by critics including a young Italo Calvino-to the phase in which he experimented with different languages, from Nordic influences to Art Nouveau, to the models of the 15th-century Ferraresi. These were years marked by major awards and participation in the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadrennial, but also by constant travel. He had been in Romagna in 1940 and in 1943 to escape as a partisan from Fascist reprisals; he traveled widely, repeatedly changing his residence: from Antibes to Grado, from Frascati to Bologna, trying to find a place in which he could feel at home.
Moreni’s pictorial research became part of the lively artistic debate of the time, adhering to the abstract/concrete movement and participating in the Group of Eight Painters at the invitation of Lionello Venturi, while always maintaining a personal style that was never fully aligned. The decisive turning point came with his approach to theInformal, a language that guaranteed him international visibility. Between 1956 and 1966 he lived between Paris and Palazzo San Giacomo in Russi, exhibiting regularly in France, Germany and major European galleries.
The last section of the Bagnacavallo exhibition recounts the evolution of his painting toward a personal dimension: the informal brushstrokes are transformed into the famous posters, with which the artist intended to fix images of a world that he perceived was destined to disappear rapidly.
On display are more than forty works, many of which have already been presented in prestigious museum venues in Italy and abroad and are now preserved in important private collections.
After Bagnacavallo, the project will continue in four other venues, each dedicated to a specific chapter in Moreni’s career: from Oct. 10, 2025, the Musei di San Domenico in Forlì, focuses on the period of the Angurie (curated by Rocco Ronchi); from Oct. 20, the Pinacoteca Vero Stoppioni in Santa Sofia focuses on the Autoritratti (curated by Denis Isaia); from February 2026 MAMbo in Bologna offers a remembrance, curated by Pasquale Fameli, of the great anthological exhibition of 1965, curated then by Francesco Arcangeli; finally from February 28, 2026 MAR in Ravenna treats the last cycles of Regression of the Species and The Humanoid (curated by Serena Simoni).
The exhibition Dagli esordi ai cartelli is promoted by the Municipality of Bagnacavallo and the “Mattia” Association, organized by the Association and the Museo Civico delle Cappuccine. The entire project was created thanks to the collaboration with generous private collectors and the support of Manifattura Ceccarelli and Teikos Solutions. Accompanying it, a catalog published by Dario Cimorelli Editore documents all the works on display in the five venues.
Exhibition hours in Bagnacavallo: Tuesday and Wednesday from 2:30 to 6 p.m.; Thursday from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 to 6 p.m.; Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 to 7 p.m.). From Sept. 26 to 28, during the Feast of St. Michael, extended hours from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday, September 29, extended hours 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Closed Mondays.
 |
| Bagnacavallo hosts the first event of a wide-ranging exhibition project dedicated to Mattia Moreni |
Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.
