Nomellini, Viani and Levy star in Forte dei Marmi summer exhibition

From June 17 to November 5, 2023, Forte Leopoldo I in Forte dei Marmi hosts the exhibition Accadde in versilia, produced by the Society of Fine Arts with the City of Forte dei Marmi and Fondazione Villa Bertelli. The exhibition aims to highlight the moment of ferment that Versilia experienced at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The exhibition focuses its investigation on three great protagonists of that period: Plinio Nomellini, Lorenzo Viani and Moses Levy, offering a selection of their masterpieces, some not exhibited for a long time, from private collections, with the exception of Nomellini’s Festa al villaggio, a painting granted by the Pinacoteca “Il Divisionismo” of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Tortona.

In the early 1990s, Plinio Nomellini oriented his language toward new experiments, both Divisionist, thanks to his frequentation of Pellizza da Volpedo, and Neo-Impressionist, imported from Paris. His 1903 meeting with Giovanni Pascoli added a Symbolist turn to his painting. The selection of his works for the Versilia exhibition is anticipated by Giuseppe Viner’s large canvas, The Sowing, part of the triptych Terra Madre, exhibited in 1906 for the opening of the Simplon Pass. Nomellini recounts here the everyday life he spends in Versilia. Here is the construction of ashipyard (Cantiere, 1904) or simple domestic rituals, as in The Dinner Hour (1898) or Quiet Hours (1898), or village folklore(The Church of San Frediano in Lucca, c. 1930).

The laughing and placid images of Versilia offered by Nomellini and, later, by Moses Levy are abruptly diverted by the powerful and magmatic expressionism of Lorenzo Viani, who devises the alphabet best suited to describe, at one and the same time, the darkest face of that land and the dispossessed people who inhabit it. Such is the case with the hieratic image of The Sailor’s Wife, On the Wharf. Waiting for the return of the boats, Peritucco with the red bow, of the meager stoop of Wayfarers and Old Fisherman. his art is often inspired by the dramatic dimension of the daily vicissitudes of the humble, of those who fiercely oppose or with difficulty endure the harshness of life.

The third section is devoted to one of the greatest protagonists of Versilia’s artistic season of the first three decades of the 20th century: Moses Levy. Tunisian by birth, he elected this land as his homeland, becoming one of the most admired and persuasive singers of what could be defined as a late Versilian “belle époque.” The selected works cover about thirty years (1911-1938). Among the masterpieces on display are Woman with a White Hat, Cinema Eolo and Evening Crowd on the Viareggio waterfront, the luminous Spiagge series, Profilo di giovinetto and Anna e l’amica, which fully include Levy in the Italian artistic context of the 1920s, up to the astonishingly modern outcomes in the Matisse-like chromatic expressionism of the later Signora in rosso al caffè.

Hours: June 17-September 10, daily 5 to 11 p.m.; Wednesdays 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. September 11-November 5, Wednesdays 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 7:30 p.m.

Tickets: Full 8 euros, reduced 6 euros for residents and journalists with ID), free for under 18 and disabled.

Image: Plinio Nomellini, The Quiet Hours (1898; oil on canvas, 89.5 x 114 cm)

Nomellini, Viani and Levy star in Forte dei Marmi summer exhibition

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