Exhibition, 3 Dec 2022 - 4 Jun 2023

Giotto and the Twentieth Century

MART Rovereto, Rovereto, Italy

Divided into seven sections, the exhibition opens with a large immersive installation reproducing the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Following a chronological and thematic order, the exhibition continues among the works of great authors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries who share a passion for the figure of Giotto, studied, imitated or taken as a model of perfection and spirituality. Between metaphysics, plastic values and magic realism, the protagonists of the first part of the exhibition are Carlo Carrà, Mario Sironi, Arturo Martini, Giorgio de Chirico, Gino Severini, Massimo Campigli, Achille Funi and Ubaldo Oppi.
More recent art is no less indebted to the medieval lesson than the art of the early twentieth century. Europeans such as Henri Matisse, Yves Klein and Josef Albers, as well as Americans such as Mark Rothko, acknowledge their debt to Giotto, the absolute inspiration. His famous blue has influenced some of the most famous artists. The layering of iconographic elements inherent in the study of art history recognizes an abstract modernity in Giotto's work that comes alive in the large immersive installation by James Turrell, a contemporary master of light and color and a specialist in perception. The exhibition concludes with installations by two artists, Chiara Dynys and Tacita Dean, whose work once again renews the dialogue with one of the greatest masters of all time.