The exhibition presents, in nine sections, a journey through Italian art from the years of the Great War to the early Sixties: from the "Novecento" to Art Deco, from the "Italiens de Paris" to fascist propaganda art, from the Roman School to realism, abstractionism, and informal art.

The Monte dei Paschi di Siena Collection and the Brandi Collection preserve authentic masterpieces from this half-century, capable of tracing the development, certainly not linear and marked by contradictions, deviations, and heretical figures, which ranges from figuration to its dissolution: just mention the names of Ferrazzi, Andreotti, Carrà, Sironi, Donghi, De Pisis, Severini, Campigli, Morandi, Rosai, Viani, Levi, Mafai, Manzù, Marini, Guttuso, Afro, Scialoja, Turcato, Burri, all authors represented with works of primary importance. Alongside the great names of 20th-century Italian art, a significant selection of Sienese and to a lesser extent Tuscan artists will also be exhibited: not in an impossible and useless competition with the recognized "masters," but in an open and sometimes surprising dialogue.

Italian art of the last century is characterized, to a large extent, by the coexistence of a production focused in major centers and its original dissemination in smaller centers: constellations, indeed, of an interconnected and dialectical art system even in its most individual and distinctive manifestations. An attempt will also be made to reconstruct the events related to the acquisitions of works from the Monte dei Paschi Collection, still to be clarified in relation to the long collecting history of contemporary art of the Sienese institution. Therefore, an exhibition that, in addition to presenting works of the highest quality from Italian Novecento, also aims to offer a new scientific contribution to the knowledge of art and collecting in Siena in the last century.