From 25 January to 30 August 2020 the Lu.CCA - Lucca Center of Contemporary Art proposes a new major exhibition entitled “Stories of the Twentieth Century in Tuscany. Soffici, Viani, Rosai, Maccari, Marcucci, Venturi: from the return to order to the conquest of disorder ”. The exhibition, curated by Maurizio Vanni and Piero Pananti, tells through 81 works, including masterpieces lent by major Italian collectors and archives, some figurative twentieth century stories in Tuscany. Starting from the First World War, many artists and intellectuals revised their thoughts on the Avant-gardes and, after the Futurist experience, we witnessed a real "Return to order" supported by the magazine "Valori plastici". Reassuring answers were sought in the past to rediscover national identity in classical culture.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, Tuscany had a very intense artistic life. Mino Maccari and Mario Marcucci appeared on the scene who at first felt the influence of post-Macchiaiolism, but then the former turned to an archaic expressionist satire and an intimist post-impressionism with expressionist impulses the latter. Ardengo Soffici drew on Futurism by personalizing it. Between 1913 and 1914 it was he who founded, together with Giovanni Papini, the magazine "Lacerba" with which Ottone Rosai also began to collaborate, which characterized his works with a subjective sense of dramatic force. Both showed particular attention to the Tuscan Quattrocento. In 1917, in fact, in the magazine “La Voce” the importance of the recovery of plastic values and primitive artistic forms on which to codify the new century began to be talked about. The return to order was reassuring.

Lorenzo Viani , on his return from the Parisian experience (1908-10), "violated" the order by combining the lesson of Fattori with the hard and incisive sign of Nordic Expressionism. Marcucci also gave proof of free painting and little interest in the classical sign with works related to subjects drawn from the domestic and family environment. In 1936 Venturino Venturi returned to Florence after a long stay in France and Luxembourg. Right from the start he proposed graphic and sculptural works that were affected by the primordial and tribal suggestions of Modigliani's sculpture translated through essentiality and personal synthesis. By now the classical echo was completely outdated. Conquering disorder became a way of life.