From futurists to Duchamp, eight exhibitions in 2023

There are avant-garde languages in early 20th century Italy that find their highest expression in the Futurist generation. And there is the contemporary in dialogue with the Renaissance architecture of the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, among the surprising visions of Maurizio Cattelan, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst.
2023 has many surprises in store for art lovers, between painting, performance, photography.
Here are eight exhibitions not to be missed in the coming year.

Lotto, Romanino, Moretto, Ceruti. The masters of painting challenge each other in Brescia
From January 21, Brescia will host one of the most anticipated exhibitions of 2023, part of the “Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture 2023” program. The itinerary of the exhibition entitled Lotto, Romanino, Moretto, Ceruti. Masters of painting in Brescia and Bergamocurated by Davide Dotti, organized by the Association of Friends of Palazzo Martinengo, with the patronage of the Province of Brescia, the Municipality of Brescia, the Municipality of Bergamo, the Events Foundation of the Province of Brescia, brings a selection of more of eighty masterpieces with Italian and foreign public and private collections that will give life to a real cultural and artistic derby.
For the first time, the exhibition puts into dialogue the cultural and artistic production that Bergamo and Brescia expressed during almost four centuries of Venetian domination.
The creations of the great masters of the Brescian Renaissance, from Foppa to Moretto, from Romanino and Savoldo to Gambara, will rival those of their Bergamo counterparts Moroni, Palma il Vecchio, Cariani, Previtali and Lotto.
The itinerary will show how the common Lombard cultural substrate, revived by the innovations proposed by Venetian painters such as Bellini and Titian, resulted in expressive languages, in some cases similar, in others contrasting.

In Parma, winter is pop with Roy Lichtenstein
Parma commemorates Roy Lichtenstein one hundred years after his birth with an exhibition expected from February 11 to June 18 at the Palazzo Tarasconi. The itinerary, organized by Gianni Mercurio, will explore different themes of the great American artist through a selection of more than 50 works from prestigious European and American collections. The public is invited to retrace Lichtenstein’s entire artistic career since the 1960s, discovering themes and genres, from comics to advertising, from forays into abstraction to series of female nudes.

Roy Lichtenstein, Two Acts, 1994

Renoir and Italy: an encounter at Rovigo
In 1881, Pierre Auguste Renoir, then forty years old, undertook his personal Grand Tour to study the masters of the Renaissance. This trip to Italy is a real revolution for the painting of the master, shaken by a deep creative tumult. From Venice, where the artist was struck by Carpaccio and Tiepolo, to Padua, from Florence to Rome, where he was struck by the “simplicity and grandeur” of Raphael, to Naples, Renoir was literally struck by the beautiful earth.
Discover this extraordinary testimony retracing the consequences of this pilgrimage, the exhibition Renoir and Italyorganized by Paolo Bolpagni and promoted by the Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo Foundation, together with the Municipality of Rovigo and the Accademia dei Concordi, awaits at Palazzo Roverella from February 25 to June 25.
Based on the biography of his son Jean, a famous director, the exhibition focuses on a specific phase of Renoir’s creation: from his trip to Italy to his late works.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Adèle Besson, 1918, oil on canvas, 37 x 41 cm, Besançon, Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology

Perugia celebrates “the best champion in Italy”
Among the main events of the Perugino 2023 year, the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia hosts an exhibition dedicated to Pietro Vannucci, the most important painter active in the last two decades of the fifteenth century. From March 4 to June 11, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death, the gallery will host the exhibition The best master in Italy. Perugino in his timecurated by Marco Pierini, director of the National Gallery of Umbria, and Veruska Picchiarelli.
The route, beacon of centenarians, will restore to Perugino, absolute protagonist of the Renaissance, the role of artistic prominence that his public and his time had attributed to him, through great proofs of his production, all before 1504, when he was at the height of his extraordinary career.
The exhibition project, characterized by more than seventy works, presents Vannucci’s paintings before 1504, the year in which the painter worked on three commissions that marked the peak of his career: the crucifixion from the Chigi chapel to Sant’Agostino in Siena, the Struggle between love and chastity formerly in Mantua, today in the Louvre in Paris, and oh surprise Marriage of the Virgin for the Chapel of the Sacred Ring of the Cathedral of Perugia, today at the Museum of Fine Arts in Caen (France).

The stars of contemporary art shine at Palazzo Strozzi
From March 4, 2023, the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation will present Reach for the stars. From Maurizio Cattelan to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The itinerary, organized by Arturo Galansino, General Director of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation, presents a selection of works by the greatest international contemporary artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst, Lara Favaretto, Cindy Sherman, William Kentridge, Berlinde De Bruyckere, to celebrate in Florence the To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, one of the most prestigious collections of contemporary Italian art. The exhibition, promoted and organized by the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation and the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation, examines the most important artistic research of the last four decades through some works distributed in the rooms of Palazzo Strozzi, with a new installation for the Renaissance courtyard .
In addition to promoting painting, sculpture, installation, photography and video, the project will encourage dialogue between Palazzo Strozzi and contemporary art while looking at younger generations.

Pietro Perugino (1448 – 1523), Marriage of the Virgin, 1502, oil on panel, 234 x 185 cm, Caen Museum of Fine Arts

In Lecco, spring belongs to the futurists
The dynamism of Giacomo Balla intertwines with the aerial strikes of Crali, touches the Intonarumori of Russolo, crosses the Campari bottle of Fortunato Depero. It will take place from March 18 to June 18, 2023 at the Palazzo delle Paure in Lecco, where the exhibition futurists. A pioneer generation will examine the presence of avant-garde languages in Italy in the first decades of the 20th century. Curated by Simona Bartolena, produced and created by ViDi – Visit Different, in collaboration with the Municipality of Lecco and the Lecco Urban Museum System, the route will explore the many expressions of the futuristic experience through the works of its most famous such as Giacomo Balla, Luigi Russolo, Gino Severini, Enrico Prampolini, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Antonio Sant’Elia, Fortunato Depero, Tullio Crali.
Born and developed in Italy, this movement, one of the most important in Europe, radiated its touch of novelty and revolution in the visual arts, in literature and in daily life. The long-awaited exhibition in Lecco will report on Futurism in its different generations and declinations, comparing it to other avant-garde artistic currents and expressions of the first three decades of the century and examining its relationship with the European scene and Italian society at the time.

At the Castello di Rivoli an exhibition for the 90th anniversary of Michelangelo Pistoletto
In autumn 2023, on the occasion of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s ninetieth birthday and as part of Turin Art Week, the Castello di Rivoli presents a major solo exhibition by the artist, whose research has since contributed to redefine the concept of art in the mid-1960s. For this project in the Castello di Rivoli – home to the most important nucleus of historic Arte Povera works in the world – Pistoletto designed an immersive work installation unprecedented of great visual impact that will invade the spaces of the Manica Lunga.

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Lumpenvenus, 1967, Rivoli, Museum of contemporary art Château de Rivoli

Marcel Duchamp arrives in Venice
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice houses a luxury edition of travel trunks (Louis Vuitton), an authentic portable museum of 69 replicas and miniature reproductions of Duchamp’s works, which the American patron purchased from the artist in 1941 box in a suitcase (1935-1941) is at the center of the exhibition entitled Marcel Duchamp and the seduction of the copy, edited by Paul B. Franklin, independent researcher and Duchamp expert. The exhibition will feature major loans from renowned Italian and American museums and various private collections, including a private collection in Venice.
From October 14 to March 18, it can be admired in Venice with the work of the artist, who in his work challenges the traditional hierarchy between original and copy. By reproducing his work in different mediums, with different sizes and in limited editions, Duchamp radically redefined what constitutes a work of art and the identity of the artist himself.