A partnership has been signed between the two institutions to promote their respective art collections, made possible through the collaboration of Banca Ifis. The first initiative will be an exhibition dedicated to Mario Ceroli, opening in December 2024 at Palazzo Citterio in Milan and from spring 2025 at GNAM in Rome.
The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome and the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan have signed an agreement to promote their respective historical and artistic collections. The two institutions will be able to collaborate on study, promotion, scientific research and shared exhibition projects. These aims and reasons of public interest are further strengthened by the forthcoming opening of Palazzo Citterio in Milan, where Brera’s modern and contemporary art collection will be accessible.
The agreement was also made possible through the collaboration of Banca Ifis, which is committed to supporting a long-term partnership between the two institutions, with the aim of enhancing their respective art collections and sharing exhibition projects. The Bank’s commitment is already taking shape in the first stage of the collaboration between the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome and the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan: an exhibition dedicated to Mario Ceroli, in Milan with a site-specific installation in the Stirling Room of Palazzo Citterio, scheduled to open next December. The exhibition will then move to Rome in spring 2025, with an expanded selection of works presented as a survey exhibition in several rooms of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Cristina Mazzantini, Director of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, explains the nature of the agreement:
“The agreement with the Pinacoteca di Brera, like those already established with the Royal Museums of Turin and the Gallerie dell’Umbria, is important, especially in a global cultural landscape in which international museums are growing, becoming larger every day, expanding their collections and displaying them across multiple locations. This agreement will allow GNAM and Brera to combine forces and resources to develop an engaging programme of exhibitions, beginning with the one dedicated to Mario Ceroli, creating an ideal cultural bridge between Rome and Milan. Ceroli is one of the ‘new masters’ of Italian art: a unique artist, although already a leading figure of Arte Povera and the Pop era. This exhibition celebrates his extraordinary career, permeated by a constant search for wonder. I thank Ernesto Fürstenberg Fassio for the great sensitivity with which he has supported one of the leading figures of Italian contemporary art, and Banca Ifis for making his exhibition possible.”
“I believe it is essential for Italy’s autonomous state museums to collaborate, under the supervision of the new department for the enhancement of cultural heritage, with the aim of creating a strong system of relationships and joint projects. In view of the imminent opening of Palazzo Citterio, collaboration with the National Gallery is indispensable and a source of pride for us. The exhibition dedicated to Mario Ceroli is the first test of this partnership, and we must thank Banca Ifis for its support,” commented Angelo Crespi, Director General of the Pinacoteca di Brera and Braidense National Library.
“We wanted to support this project bringing Rome and Milan together as a way of demonstrating our commitment to the world of art and culture. In doing so, we are supporting two of Italy’s most prestigious institutions through the public-private partnership that characterises Banca Ifis’s work in the arts and in all the other sectors in which it operates, from the economy to social initiatives. This initiative takes place through ‘Ifis art’, the brand I personally conceived to promote the enhancement of Italy’s artistic and cultural heritage. It is a platform that is continually enriched with new projects, such as the one we are presenting on this occasion: an exhibition dedicated to Mario Ceroli, first in Milan at Palazzo Citterio and then in Rome at GNAM. It is a unique opportunity: for the second stage of this travelling exhibition, the number of works selected from Mario’s collection will increase, as part of an ongoing dialogue with our Bank, with the aim of bringing his vision of art to life in the most prestigious national and international contexts,” said Ernesto Fürstenberg Fassio, Chairman of Banca Ifis.
The exhibition dedicated to Mario Ceroli in Milan (December 2024) and Rome (spring 2025) offers an original opportunity to reflect on the artist’s entire creative journey: a new chapter in an artistic career that began with a strong identity in the second half of the 1950s and has maintained a constant focus on both forms and processes.
Curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, the exhibition will bring together approximately five works/installations at Palazzo Citterio, including the work that gives the entire project its title: Venezia.
This is a monumental installation comprising several dozen elements: pine tree trunks from the garden of the artist’s home in Rome, cut down following their premature death caused by an infestation of the tortoise scale insect. On the one hand, the exhibition is conceived as an autobiographical tribute to the city that welcomed the sculptor in 1966, on the occasion of the Art Biennale, contributing to his early success on the international scene. On the other, it is a meditation on beauty, on the uniqueness of the Serenissima and, above all, on human ingenuity and the extraordinary craftsmanship behind the construction and longevity of a city built on water, based on the remarkable engineering of wooden piles driven into the lagoon sediment.
In the Stirling Room, with its imposing and awe-inspiring presence, following the iconography of a “wooden Stonehenge”, the exhibition will thus evoke an immersive eco-mythology inspired by the extraordinary attention devoted to nature and its complexity by different traditions around the world throughout history, up to the Industrial Revolution.
Ceroli, who has worked with a wide range of materials—from marble to ice, as well as water, glass, sand, coloured earths, fabric and ash—over nearly seventy years of uninterrupted research, confirms wood as his material of choice. It is the same material with which he began his sculptural journey, winning the National Gallery of Modern Art award as early as 1957 with a work made of logs and nails.
“The installation Venezia is a further testament to the artist’s faith in humanity, in nature and in the regenerative power of the alliance between artifice and the global ecosystem. It is his monument to a new vision of a supportive and sustainable society that can be defined as a ‘new planetary humanism’, in the sense proposed in 2005 by the writer and intellectual Ernesto Balducci,” states Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, curator of the exhibition.
Mario Ceroli’s work is therefore once again “vital”, because once again he redesigns life. As the artist often reminds us, “Trees are life, and they closely resemble human beings, their physical structure.” His work has always been created for the community; it is useful, an intervention of art and culture that must enter the streets and communities, “because,” as Mario Ceroli always stresses, “it is of no use in homes.”
After its Milanese presentation at Palazzo Citterio, the Mario Ceroli exhibition will move to the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, where it will be enriched with further works.