Divine Beauty: From Van Gogh to Chagall and Fontana opens at Palazzo Strozzi Florence

Palazzo Strozzi in Florence will host an exhibition entitled Divine Beauty: From Van Gogh to Chagall and Fontana running from 24 September 2015 to 24 January 2016. This exhibition with over one hundred works by important Italian artists as Domenico Morelli, Gaetano Previati, Felice Casorati, Renato Guttuso, Lucio Fontana and Emilio Vedova, together with international masters like Vincent van Gogh, Jean-François Millet, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Georges Rouault and Henri Matisse, sets out to explore the relationship between art and the sacred from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Divine Beauty will provide visitors with a unique opportunity to compare and contrast a number of famous works of art, observed in a new and different light, alongside pieces by artists whose work is perhaps less well-known today but who, in their own way, have helped to forge the rich and complex panorama of modern art as a whole, not simply in a religious environment. Religious art is presented here as a “genre” in its own right, as an art form that came down from the altar to play a direct role in the artistic debate between the 19th and 20th centuries while at the same time reviving the great themes on which religion and spirituality have been focusing from time immemorial.
Curated by Lucia Mannini, Anna Mazzanti, Ludovica Sebregondi and Carlo Sisi, the exhibition, which is the product of a joint venture between the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, the former Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze, the Archdiocese of Florence and the Vatican Museums, is part of a programme of events devised to run concurrently with the Fifth National Bishops Conference, scheduled to be held in Florence from 9 to 13 November and in the course of which Pope Francis himself will be visiting the city.

Booking: Sigma CSC T. +39 055 2469600 F. +39 055 244145
prenotazioni@palazzostrozzi.org
Opening hours: Daily 10.00-20.00, Thursday 10.00-23.00. Last admission one hour before closing
Admission: Full price € 10,00; concessions € 8,50; € 7,50; € 4,00 Schools
Info T. +39 055 2645155 www.palazzostrozzi.org

Felice Casorati (Novara 1883–Turin 1963) The Prayer, 1914. Tempera on moleskin, 130 x 120 cm Verona, Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti, inv. 25238-1C-3763
Comune di Verona, Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti, © Felice Casorati, by SIAE 2015