The new exhibition at the Fermo Museums is part of the major cultural events of the regional project "The Seventeenth Century in the Marches". From 9 December 2022 to 1 May 2023, the Halls of Palazzo dei Priori will host the exhibition “The Painters of Reality. Truth and illusion between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries” , curated by Vittorio Sgarbi with Beatrice Avanzi and Daniela Ferrari. The exhibition, created thanks to the precious collaboration with the Mart of Rovereto, reinterprets a particular season of post-war Italian art through eighty works on display: the adventure of the "modern painters of reality" . A group of artists who made their debut in 1947 by railing against the results of modernism to defend and recover the great pictorial tradition, between truth and illusion, from Caravaggio to Spanish and Flemish painting.

In any case, as Vittorio Sgarbi writes: “A party. It was the last celebration of Italian painting”.

The group of "Modern Painters of Reality" is fully represented in the exhibition: Gregorio Sciltian , Pietro Annigoni , Xavier and Antonio Bueno . Also present are Alfredo Serri and Giovanni Acci and Carlo Guarnieri , who later joined the group. The exhibition is completed by two masterpieces by Giorgio de Chirico , the father of Metaphysics who consolidated relationships of esteem with all four of the "modern painters of reality".

In addition, compared with the modern ones, works by ancient artists are also presented, mainly from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, fed by the Caravaggesque and then by the Baroque climate, assumed as a source of inspiration and model for the four signatories of the manifesto. Among these artists we mention Alessandro Magnasco , the so-called Master of Hartford , Giuseppe Recco and Carlo Magini .

Further comparisons will be possible with the works of the permanent collection of the Pinacoteca Civica of Fermo, rich in works of the seventeenth century (we mention among others "The adoration of the shepherds" by Rubens and the "Pentecost" by Lanfranco) and of the Prints and Drawings Department of the “Romolo Spezioli” Civic Library.