ACHILLES FUNI
A master of the twentieth century between history and myth

Name: ACHILLES FUNI
Start: 2023-10-28 00:00:00
End: 2024-02-25 00:00:00
Location: Diamond Palace

Diamond Palace

Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

The show

Virgilio Socrate Achille Funi (Ferrara, 1890 – Appiano Gentile, 1972) was a protagonist through the main movements that characterized Italian culture in the first half of the twentieth century. After distinguishing himself in the moderate wing of Futurism, he rose to prominence among the great interpreters of Magical Realism, of the modern classicism of the twentieth century and of the muralism of the Thirties, while maintaining a marked autonomy. In love with classical myths and Renaissance wisdom, at the to the point of being considered a modern humanist, Funi was able to celebrate "the eternity of life in art" by drawing on the formal values of the ancient figurative tradition as well as the more current language of Cézanne, Picasso, Derain, de Chirico.

His hometown pays homage to him with a vast anthological exhibition, organized by the Ferrara Arte Foundation and the Art Museums Service of the Municipality of Ferrara, scheduled from 28 October 2023 to 25 February 2024 at Palazzo dei Diamanti. The exhibition, curated by Nicoletta Colombo, Serena Redaelli and Chiara Vorrasi, offers the public a unique opportunity to re-read the entire creative parable of the painter through more than one hundred and twenty works, coming from important public and private collections, Italian and foreign, including include the artist's greatest masterpieces. Oil and tempera paintings, watercolors and charcoal and sanguine drawings, up to the preparatory cartoons for the large frescoes and mosaics will allow you to rediscover the extraordinary talent of one of the greatest masters of the twentieth century.

The journey starts from the first academic tests of the young Funi which soon leave room for avant-garde research and a moderate futurist phase, resulting from his acquaintance with Boccioni, Carrà, Russolo and Bonzagni, evidenced by emblematic works of 1914 such as Man Descending from the tram, the Museo del Novecento in Milan and The Motorcyclist. The visitor is then accompanied through the stages of the Return to Order which developed in post-war Europe and of which Funi acted as an interpreter: from the transition works, in the name of Cézanne and metaphysics (Genealogy, 1918-19, by Mart of Rovereto), to the masterpieces of Magical Realism that draw on the figurative culture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of Ferrara and the Po Valley (in addition to Maternity and The Earth, also Water, exhibited again on this occasion after over a century), up to the milestones of "Novecento", the movement led by Margherita Sarfatti, which brought together the best exponents of a modern and majestic classicism (from the Self-portrait of the Museum of Italian Switzerland in Lugano, to Picasso's Saffo, from Raphael's Reading of the GNAM in Rome, to the androgynous Venus of the Cantonal Museum of Lausanne).

The journey continues with the works of the 1930s and 1940s where he tackles the genres of art history with a completely personal style, from portraits to historical-mythological painting, as witnessed by Publius Horace kills his sister in the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, from nature dead, to the landscape (The Roman Forum of the GAMC of Ferrara). The exhibition ends with the season of mural painting. Together with Sironi, Funi gave new impetus to the glorious Italian tradition of fresco and mosaic by actively engaging in the decoration of new public buildings that arose as part of the extensive building and urban planning activity promoted by the regime. The civil ideals that animate the artist are poured into this art form of marked social value, incarnating in a grandiose and visionary epic in which the venerated models of past glorious civilizations come to life. The exhibition is also an opportunity to rediscover the Myth of Ferrara, an impressive decorative undertaking that Funi created for the Sala dell'Arengo of the Municipal Residence of the city of Este. The cycle represents the sum of the large and numerous mural projects that he frescoed in the 1930s and 1940s in Milan, Trieste, Rome and Tripoli, of which a superb selection of preparatory cartoons can be admired on display.