(ANSA) - MILAN, 19 SEPTEMBER - The Museo del Novecento in Milan will host the Mattioli collection, the most important collection in the world of futurist and Italian avant-garde works of the early 1900s Declared indivisible and irreplaceable by the State in 1973, it is made up of 26 works including Boccioni's Materia, and works by Balla, Carrà, Morandi and Modigliani.
The collection, which has an insurance value of almost 143 million, was sold on free loan for 5 years, renewable.
Thus "the museum of the twentieth century becomes the most important in the world on futurism" Anna Maria Montaldo, director of the Municipality's modern and contemporary art center, tells ANSA.
The importance of the sale lies not only in the value of the works themselves - including 'Mercury passes in front of the sun' by Giacomo Balla, 'Interventionist manifestation' by Carlo Carrà, 'Bottles and fruit bowl' by Giorgio Morandi and 'Composition with helix' by Mario Sironi - but in the fact that they enrich and complete a collection that is already of great value. 'Blue Ballerina' by Gino Severini, for example, will join the 'White Ballerina' already present. In football terms, it would be like joining Messi to a great team where Ronaldo already plays.
From 1997 to 2015 the Mattioli collection was exhibited at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice. Instead, in 2017 the announcement that it would go to Palazzo Citterio for two years, that is the space dedicated to the twentieth century in Brera,which, however, is not yet ready for opening.
At the moment the works are exhibited at the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg, as a fundamental part of the exhibition 'Italian Futurism of the Mattioli collection. Russian Cubofuturism of the Russian Museum and Private Collections'. They will arrive in Milan next spring and "the prospect - reveals Montaldo - is to present the gallery of futurism with the Mattioli collection in October 2022". (HANDLE).