The stolen Klimt will be exhibited on November 28 in Piacenza

PIACENZA - "A single event is not enough to relaunch the gallery. The project tried to keep the painting linked with the rest of the collection, crossing dates and contents. The painting will not make us forget the architecture of this building, we will enhance the structure and his own story". This is how Massimo Ferrari, president of the Ricci Oddi modern art gallery in Piacenza, announced the ambitious "Klimt Project", the four-stage, two-year journey that will lead the Emilian city to regain possession of the famous painting "Portrait di Signora "by Gustav Klimt, mysteriously stolen in 1997 and found, just as mysteriously, in December last year after being one of the most sought-after works in the world. Klimt's masterpiece will be exhibited to the public as a "solo work - one work show" starting next November 28 in the hall of honor of the Piacenza museum, and will be protected by a special safety case. "The Klimt project is a biennial, and is imagined in four stages linked to each other in a path that from the single work Portrait of a Lady returned to be part of the collection comes to the comparison with the global reach of Gustav Klimt's work "was said during the presentation , in which the Board of Directors of the Ricci Oddi gallery took part: in addition to the president Massimo Ferrari and Laura Bonfanti (prefecture), Leonardo Bragalini (Piacenza and Vigevano Foundation), Alessandro Casali (Ricci Oddi family), Franca Franchi (Friends of art ), Giovanni Giuffrida (Municipality of Piacenza) and Corrado Sforza Fogliani (Academy of San Luca). Faced with the great expectation addressed to the re-exhibition of the stolen work more than twenty years ago, the project has imagined a two-year program marked by four stages which, starting from the story of the single painting and its history, broadens the gaze to relationship between Klimt and some authors and artists present in the gallery to then contextualize the not always known link between the artist and Italy until relocating it in 2022 - in the year of 160 years of his birth (4 July 1862) - in the panorama world as the major artist of the Viennese secession. "The Klimt project, in the ideal of culturally placing the Ricci Oddi Gallery in the right prominence with respect to the national and international scene, will cross an important date for its history, that is the celebrations for the 90th anniversary of '' inauguration of our museum on 11 October 1931, in the absence of the donor, too shy to take part in the ceremony attended by the princes of Piedmont, Umberto and Maria José di Savoia "reads the presentation of the project. The first phase of the journey, the most important one, will begin precisely on November 28th, when the work will finally be exhibited to the public after the last restorations carried out in recent months. In other places in the gallery some digital media will show the history of the work. The events will also tell the story of Klimt. During the second phase entitled "Klimt and the secret masters of Ricci Oddi", from 28 March to 11 October 2022, the other artists present in the Piacenza museum will be enhanced, while the third phase, from title "Symbols and dreams. Klimt and the Italy of symbolism" (11 October 2021 to 28 March 2022) will focus on the 90th birthday of the Ricci Oddi gallery and on Klimt's artistic influence in Italy. To conclude the path (from 28 March 2022 to 11 October 2022) will be "Klimt's World" to celebrate the 160th anniversary of the artist's birth and the expressive path that led the artist in the last years of his life to create the Portrait of a Lady