Mario Sironi's Controversial Art on View in Abano Terme

Mario Sironi (Sassari, 1885 – Milano, 1961) is the subject of a new exhibition at Museo Villa Bassi in Abano Terme, featuring around 30 works from private collections. Alan Serri, who recently inherited Galleria 56 in Bologna from his father Ertemio, reveals that many paintings and works on paper have not left their vaults or collectors' homes for decades. The anthological itinerary aims to further reassess an artist deeply linked to the Fascist regime, after which he suffered painful marginalization. The exhibition includes early works, such as a landscape painted at age 15, and later pieces showing his monumental style influenced by Futurism, Cubism, and Metaphysics. Notable is a large cartoon for a mural decoration at Ca' Foscari in Venice (1935–1936) and its preparatory sketch, marking a partnership between the museum and the Venetian university. Curator Chiara Marangoni highlights Sironi's preference for tempera, which allowed speed of execution. The upper floor focuses on Sironi's final years, revealing bright colors and compositions evoking Massimo Campigli, with forms approaching informal trends of the late 1950s. The exhibition underscores Sironi's enduring connection to his time, as he wrote in a 1903 letter: "I adore the beauty that art and nature offer me: I believe in nothing else."