There Giorgio Conti Foundation is dedicated to my father, a man who, thanks to his resourcefulness, his determination and the ability to imagine the future, managed to create a group that is now a world leader in the sector of excavation and marketing of marble and stones.
The purpose for which our family, in particular my sister Daniela and I, decided to purchase and restore Palazzo Cucchiari was to honor his memory, continuing his civil passion and his social sensitivity, fueled by his great love for the city of Carrara, its history, its cultural traditions, its artistic expressions. Palazzo Cucchiari, one of the most representative examples of nineteenth-century Carrara architecture, it was thus returned to the city, as a “house of culture” and a “place of the spirit”, a space of feeling for the people of Carrara, a place of knowledge for everyone. A nineteenth-century building, the century of history, the century of industrial developments in the city of marble has thus returned to being, thanks to the rigor and quality of the restoration and thanks to its exhibition activity, a symbol of what the nineteenth century was for Carrara and for the new Italy.
From the ground floor, using the center of the stairwell as an observation point, you can enjoy an almost hypnotic vertical perspective of the severe geometries, from the three flights of cantilevered steps up to the last ceiling of the building frescoed with fake coffers with floral decorations . The staircase leads to the heart of the building, the exhibition rooms where, since 2015, exhibitions of great artistic quality have been set up.
The new life of Palazzo Cucchiari began in fact by activating a collaboration with the Hermitage of St. Petersburg, destined to last also in the following years thanks to the friendship developed with Sergei Androsov, director of the Department of Western Art at the time. The first exhibition, «The Carrara school at the Hermitage: Canova and the masters of marble»was ordered, with the curatorship of Androsov himself and of Massimo Bertozziaround two sculptures that had set a precedent in Carrara, the «Orpheus» of Antonio Canova and the «Trust in God» of Lorenzo Bartoliniwhich were surrounded by sculptures by Carrara masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from the Tsars’ Collections: from Giovanni Antonio Cybei And Pietro Teneraniuntil Carlo Finelli And Luigi Bienaimé. The collaboration with the Russian museum was consolidated in the following years with the exhibition «City of the Grand Tour from the Hermitage and Apuan views from Italian collections»a collection of the most famous Italian landscape artists, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Angelo Inganni, Giovanni Migliara, Ippolito Caffiand Europeans, Jan Miel Jakob, Philipp Hackert And Hubert Robert and therefore with the exhibition still dedicated to marble and sculpture, «After Canova; sculpture itineraries in Florence and Rome»where you could admire masterpieces such as «Amore alato» by Canovathe «Young Bacchus» by Bartolini and «Sappho abandoned» by Dupre.
With this exhibition the collaboration with the main Italian museums also began, in particular the Modern art galleries in Rome, Florence and Turinwhich was also renewed on the occasion of «Colors and shapes of Work. From Signorini and Fattori to Pellizza, Volpedo and Balla”. The latter also saw the participation of the Civic Museums of Turin, Genoa, Venice, Livorno, Modena and Reggio Emilia which will also contribute to the creation of the exhibition in preparation for next summer: «Belle Époque. The Italian painters of modern life” (June 29-October 27) with paintings by League, Factors, Boldini, De Nittis, Dance, Boccioni and many others.
