Floriano Bodini Civic Museum

The Floriano Bodini Civic Museum is located in Gemonio, the birthplace of the sculptor to whom it is dedicated and was born from the conversion of an eighteenth-century rural farmhouse into an institution dedicated to the promotion and artistic research, a dynamic and gathering place that presents every year exhibitions of Italian and international artists, workshops, conferences, concerts and theatrical events. The central objective is to deepen and renew the knowledge of Bodini's work and of other artists linked to him by affinity, seriousness and rigor in research, with a look that combines the broad international scope with historical-cultural roots. The Museum was inaugurated in 1998 by the will of the municipal administration in collaboration with the Province of Varese and the Mountain Community of Valcuvia, thanks to funding from the Lombardy Region and the Cariplo Foundation. The collection is made up of different nuclei: the corpus of Bodini's works covers the entire span of his artistic activity and is made up of plaster casts, bronzes, terracotta, marble and numerous pieces of medal and graphic production. There are also a large number of sculptural, pictorial and graphic works by artists appreciated and collected by Bodini himself. To name a few, among the sculptors you can admire Leonardo Bistolfi, Medardo Rosso, Arturo Martini, Giuseppe Grandi, Lucio Fontana, Francesco Messina and Augusto Perez. Among the paintings, the Museum houses the works of artists linked to existential realism, an artistic current to which Bodini himself approaches in the youthful part of his career. Also thanks to the rich program of exhibitions and events, the Floriano Bodini Civic Museum intends to enhance and promote in particular the protagonists of Existential Realism and New Figuration. The pictorial section of the collection includes works by Alberto Sughi, Franco Francese, Giuliano Vangi, Giuseppe Zigaina, Piero Leddi and many others, to which are added more recent donations by Franco Molteni, Giordano Morganti, Claudio Bonomi, Jean Rustin and Nicola Villa. In the field of graphics, we find works by Fernand Lèger, Henry Moore, Georges Rouault and Graham Sutherland. The museum also offers an important library of over 5,000 titles, with a particular look at the authors of existential realism and the history of sculpture; they are volumes already cataloged in part and available for consultation and loan.