It’s permanent. A whole room dedicated to Giuseppe Zigainagreat Friulian artist, in the year of “Zigaina 100/Anatomy of an image”, appears from today – and forever – inside Casa Cavazzini, in Udine, the city’s beautiful museum of modern and contemporary art. The inauguration is scheduled for Friday 24 May at 5.30 pm, followed by a conference held by the museum manager Vania Gransinigh and organized by the Udinese Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts, linked to the importance of the prestigious inclusion in the civic collections.
The creation of Sala Zigaina is the necessary tribute to the talent and civil commitment of the great protagonist of Italian realism after the Second World War.
Casa Cavazzini’s initiative is part of “Zigaina 100/Anatomy of an image”, the substantial annual project curated by Francesca Agostinelli and Vanja Strukelj and supported by the Region, which had its happy debut at the Stamperia d’Arte on 3 May Apricot with an event still in progress: “The metamorphosis between inks and anatomies” (until 29 June) and which inaugurated the first event of this year’s brilliant edition of “vicino/lontano”.
Zigaina Room, curated by Vania Gransinigh, with a permanent nature, is a dedication to the artist, not an exhibition. Eight of the twenty pieces owned by the Civic Museums are on display, some of which are donations.
Let’s remember first the monumental work “Assembly of the laborers on the Cormor”considered his masterpiece, which recounts a moment of the reverse strike carried out by the laborers of the lower Friuli area in the summer of 1950. Exhibited at the XXVI Venice Biennale in 1952, also supported by a series of drawings which were protagonists in various exhibitions Italian and from texts by Zigaina himself addressed to labourers, it became the manifesto of the struggles of land workers in Friuli.
Also of considerable importance the two plates entitled “Men who kill horses” created in 1948 in memory of the painting that Zigaina said was “of my life”: that part of the “Battle of San Romano” by Paolo Uccello preserved in the Uffizi. It occupies the third wall the work “Alessandra and the shooting star”, created by Zigaina in 1966 and exhibited that year in the artist’s personal room at the XXXIII International Art Biennale in Venice together with sixteen other very recent works at the time. Published in the catalogue, it led to talk of “realistic and Orphic painting”, while a few years later Zigaina himself affirmed the entry into his painting of the 1960s of “another part of reality”, more intimate and personal. A group of drawings dedicated to the theme of the “Murdered Woman” and the “Dormitory” closes Sala Zigaina which chronologically stops at the 1960s.
Zigaina’s corpus of works brings to mind patronage. First of all, Antonio Marangoni, whose legacy allowed a policy of acquisitions, including in 1948 Men Who Kill Horses and in 1988 the canvas of the Laborers of Cormor. He recalls sensitive patronage such as that of the great Trieste collector of Greek origin Socrate Stavropulos and that of Alba and Livio Fontana, collectors from Monfalcone to whose generosity Udine owes “Dal Colle di Redipuglia. Butterfly and anatomy” from 1973, a large canvas which is displayed on the first floor, therefore outside the room, and which evokes a historical chapter linked to the tragedy of the First World War.
It is still worth remembering the group of drawings donated by Bianca Marini Solari, patron and heroine, wife of the entrepreneur and senator Fermo Solari, as well as the commitment of the Friends of the Museums of Udine who in 1971 donated a drawing to the Civic Museums linked to the Colle di Redipuglia.
Another event: Wednesday 29 May at the Visionario at 6.30pm, the preview of the Rai film dedicated by director Antonia Pillosio to Giuseppe Zigaina will take place. In fifty-four minutes the master will be remembered in the words of numerous figures who knew and frequented him. The interview with his daughter Alessandra is fundamental. —
