Survey of 20th-century Italian painting opens at Castello Aragonese in Otranto

The exhibition '900 in Italia. Da de Chirico a Fontana' at the Castello Aragonese in Otranto presents 50 works by 38 Italian artists, tracing key avant-garde movements from metaphysical painting to Arte Povera. Curated by Lorenzo Madaro and Luca Barsi, the show includes pieces from private collections, many previously unseen. The display is organized chronologically across six rooms: metaphysical painting (Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Dalmazio Carrà, Giorgio Morandi, Filippo de Pisis), Neorealism (Renato Guttuso, Ennio Morlotti, Felice Casorati, Mario Tozzi), the Forma 1 collective (Achille Perilli, Carla Accardi, Piero Dorazio, Antonio Sanfilippo) with a nod to Futurism via Giacomo Balla, Spatialism (Lucio Fontana, Enrico Castellani, Agostino Bonalumi, Fausto Melotti), Art Informel (Emilio Scanavino, Emilio Vedova), Italian Pop Art (Mimmo Rotella, Mario Schifano, Giosetta Fioroni, Tano Festa, Franco Angeli), Transavanguardia (Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi, Mimmo Paladino), and Arte Povera (Pino Pascali, Jannis Kounellis, Michelangelo Pistoletto). The exhibition is organized by the Comune di Otranto and the cooperative Theutra, with installation design by architects Francesca Fiore and Lorenzo Spagnolo. Madaro describes the show as a 'three-dimensional catalog' combining text and art for an educational experience.