Rosa Aiello, Giovanni Anselmo, Emanuele Becheri, Massimo Bartolini, Alighiero Boetti, Carlo Cioni, Connie Dekker, Daniela De Lorenzo, Elena El Asmar, Francesco Guerrieri, Carlo Guaita, Laetitia Ky, Beatrice Marchi, Paolo Meoni, Alberto Moretti, Janet Mullarney, Giovanni Ozzola, Gianni Pettena, Giulia Piscitelli, Anna Rose, Antonio Rovaldi, Andrea Santarlasci, Maitree Siriboon, Agnes Waruguru, Venturino Venturi.

Opening: Saturday 10 October, h 6.00 p.m

On Saturday, October 10 at 6 pm, on the occasion of the 22nd edition of Giornata del Contemporaneo, promoted by AMACI – Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums, Casa Masaccio | centro per l’arte contemporanea presents ABITARE IL CONTEMPORANEO, a selection of works from the Municipal Collection of Contemporary Art.

The exhibition stems from the desire to bring the city’s artistic heritage back into focus, making it accessible once again and activating it through a new perspective of research and curatorial practice. The Municipal Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art is the result of more than forty years of exhibitions, relationships with artists and curators, acquisitions, donations, collaborations, and site-specific productions, as well as the legacy of the various editions of the Premio Masaccio (1958–1968). In particular, the final edition in 1968 established a distinctive relationship between contemporary artistic research and the city where the great Renaissance painter was born.

ABITARE IL CONTEMPORANEO does not offer a simple survey of the collection, but approaches it as a living body of work, to be questioned and reinterpreted through the lens of the present. The selection of works thus becomes part of the museum’s ongoing research and experimentation: an opportunity to create new connections, bring correspondences and discontinuities to light, and convey the complexity of a heritage built over time. The collection encompasses different artistic languages, generations, and geographies, while maintaining a constant tension between memory and the present.

The different rooms offer a narrative device through which to bring together works, periods, and perspectives, starting with a reference to the Masaccio Prize and, in particular, to its final edition in 1968. This is evoked not only through archival images documenting Gianni Pettena’s intervention and the happening by the UFO group, but also through works by Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Carlo Cioni, Francesco Guerrieri, and Alberto Moretti. The exhibition also includes works conceived in close relation to the spaces of Casa Masaccio (Massimo Bartolini), works presented in their original installation (Rosa Aiello), and a tribute to Venturino Venturi, an artist deeply rooted in the local area and capable of bringing international artistic perspectives to the Valdarno.

The surfaces of the museum-house, with their layers and accumulated traces, become part of the exhibition display: a material archive that accommodates imaginary archives capable of recounting real and imagined territories and spaces, in close relation to the idea of the passage of time and of vision (Emanuele Becheri, Daniela De Lorenzo, Elena El Asmar, Paolo Meoni, Giovanni Ozzola, Anna Rose, Andrea Santarlasci). The reinterpretation of space through artistic, scientific, and aesthetic codes is further developed in the works of Carlo Guaita, Beatrice Marchi, Giulia Piscitelli, Connie Dekker, and Maitree Siriboon. Another group of works brings together distant worlds and opens up unexpected connections, as in the works of Janet Mullarney and Antonio Rovaldi, alongside recent acquisitions resulting from exhibitions devoted to emerging artistic practices from outside Europe, particularly from Africa, represented here by Laetitia Ky and Agnes Waruguru.

Press kit: https://bit.ly/4dUBgF7

Casa Masaccio | centro per l’arte contemporanea
Monday: closed
Tuesday – Friday: 15-19
Saturday, Sunday and Holidays: 10-13; 15-19
Free entrance

Free guided tours
every Sunday afternoon at h 17.30
advance booking recommended

Casa Masaccio | centro per l’arte contemporanea
Corso Italia, 83 – 52027 San Giovanni Valdarno (AR)
Tel. 055 9126283 – casamasaccio@comunesgv.it