Ri-connessioni. Art and Environment in the 19th Century and the Contemporary World

The exhibition is organized and promoted by the Museo del Paesaggio of Verbania in collaboration with the Reggia di Venaria and the Consortium of Royal Savoy Residences.

The exhibition will be open until 26 June from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm in the historic site of the Museum Palazzo Viani Dugnani, Via Ruga 44.

This collaboration between the Reggia di Venaria (The Royal Palace of Venaria) and the Museo del Paesaggio (the Museum of the Landscape) was born from the exhibition “An Infinite Beauty. Landscape and Environment in Italy from Romantic Painting to Contemporary Art”- which ended on February 27th at the Citroniera of the Royal Palace – where the work “I due noci “(The Two Walnuts) by Carlo Fornara, from the collection of the Museum of the Landscape, was also exhibited.
A selection of contemporary art works that were presented in the last sector of the Venaria exhibition is now being hosted at the art gallery of the museum in Palazzo Viani Dugnani, making a connection with the nineteenth-century landscape paintings that characterize the museum’s permanent collection.
The works coming from Venaria, from the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the third millennium, represent a time frame in which landscape painting was not a particularly well-liked and debated theme among artists. However, the natural environment as a whole
and landscape iconography, broadly speaking, nevertheless aroused the interest of some Italian artists, and fifteen of them were selected. The presence of several artists, above all active in the Piemonte area reflects the choice of giving importance to the reading of the landscape as a method of studying the culture of the territory.
These artists are placed near each other – in a game of references and contrasts between the 19th century and the Contemporary world – along the entire first floor of the museum by the curators Guido Curto, Director of the Royal Palace of Venaria and Federica Rabai, the artistic Director of the Museum of the Landscape.
Some of the most important and historical artistic movements present in the museum’s collections – from Eugenio Gignous and Guido Boggiani’s Lombard Naturalism to the Vigezzo school of Divisionism of Cesare Maggi and Carlo Fornara up to the Verism of Arnaldo Ferraguti and the sculptural Primitivism of Arturo Martini – interact with well-known contemporary artists who have dealt with and explored the theme of nature and the environment in the present day. On display are works by Maura Banfo, Francesco Tabusso, Francesco Casorati, Ugo Nespolo, Laura Pugno, Enrica Borghi, Velasco Vitali, Hilario Isola, Giorgio Ramella, Daniele Galliano, Pier Luigi Pusole, Andrea Massaioli, Giovanni Frangi, Elisa Sighicelli, Piero Gilardi.
The title of the exhibition actually intends to play with the double meaning of the word “Connection” by focusing attention on the always up-to-date themes regarding the environment and inviting the public to re-connect with nature and look at it in a new perspective, as did the
contemporary artists on exhibit artists who were, in turn, “connected” with the nineteenth-century landscape views that made up the first nucleus of works that gave life to the Museum of the Landscape.