The Fondazione Massimo e Sonia Cirulli takes the "Futurist Universe" to China
The exhibition Futurist Universe. Selections from Fondazione Massimo e Sonia Cirulli Collection opened on last September 6 in Beijing at the Tsinghua University Art Museum, presented by the prestigious Chinese institution in the framework of the 2022 Italy-China Year of Culture and Tourism.
The exhibition focuses on the core of the Fondazione Cirulli’s collection dedicated to Futurism (1909 - 1939) and highlights central themes of the Futurist aesthetics such as the hymn to creative vitality, to the playfulness and the imagination of an art that cheers the world by “recreating it”.
The exhibition project is the result of over two years of work. It does not follow a traditional historical-artistic approach – as curator Jeffrey Schnapp explains – but proposes an exploratory path through the abundance and multiplicity of the materials preserved in the Foundation's collection.
With 13 sections and over 250 works, the exhibition explores the themes dear to Futurism such as speed, energy or progress, through a careful selection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, design objects, project drawings, photographs, photomontages, advertising posters, and original documents created by artists such as Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Fortunato Depero, Virgilio Marchi, Bruno Munari, Luigi Russolo, Antonio Sant’Elia, and Thayaht, to name a few.
Futurist Universe will run until December 4.
The exhibition, which confirms the Fondazione Cirulli’s international vocation and its role in spreading knowledge and appreciation of the Italian visual culture of the 1900s, is under the patronage of the Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing, the Emilia-Romagna Region, the Metropolitan City of Bologna, and the Municipality of San Lazzaro di Savena.
The Ambassador and the staff of the Italian Cultural Institute attended, together with the curators, the ‘ribbon cutting’.