*Visit III - Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna

After days of seeing ancient and medieval art, many of us were itching to see something a little closer to recent. A small group of us decided to head up to the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, or the national modern art gallery. Not far from the Borghese gallery, we stopped at the Piazza del Popolo before walking up a shaded road towards the museum. Well signed, we found it easily, and were able to get in for a cheaper price after claiming art students, showing ID, and paying to see only the collection. Since the exhibition was more, and the second floor seemed to be shut off, we managed most of the museum we paid for, and it was well worth it.

Wandering around the first room, we came across many Italian modern artists we did not know. I found a fond spot for Piero Manzoni, who did a few pieces I liked of large fingerprints, as well as a few typography pieces.

Another artist I was fond of was Gastone Novelli, who Shannon and I agreed did some cool work. What I like seeing is artists who work with mediums you don’t see every day, and mixed media. Novelli seems fond of textures, and though I wasn’t sure what he was using other than acrylics, his piece “I Vaggi di Brek,” of a brick wall with a sidewalk in front of it, was appropriately textures. Sadly I don’t have any snapshots of these two artists I favored, for this was before I started sneaking pictures (and we were still close to the front desk).

Moving on to other minimalist modern arts, I loved the dark works of Alberto Burri, who had one half of a large room. I snapped a shot of two of his works that I favored, “Nero” and “Ferro SP.” The melding of materials and dark colors really caught my eye.

It wasn’t long until we stumbled upon some more works however, which were famous. Strolling away from the white, stark rooms of modern art, we found ourselves in a more traditional scape, with wooden floors and gold-framed paintings. I was surprised to see famous artists in front of me, namely Degas, Cezanne, Courbet, Van Gogh, and even one of Monet’s lily pad works. I was unaware and did not consider that Italy would have any holdings of French artists. Later as well I stumbled upon a familiar work by Mondrian, and Dada artist Duchamp’s Fountain, as well as some of his other work, lined along a wall.

Though famous artists are always great to see, what really kept my attention were unique paintings and some of the neo-classical type marble sculptures. In a small series of room in the back, two of my favorite pieces were Guilio Aristide Sartorio’s La Gorgone e gli Eroi painting, as well as Raffaello Romanelli’s Iris Florentina sculpture.

There were so many other artists I wrote down to look up works for. There were many photographs I could not take, and no time to draw, but I favored other pieces by painter Salvatore Postigione, sculptor Emilio Franceshi, and artists in the Venetian painting room like Guglielmo Ciardi.

Overall, the trip was well worth our small amount of money. Spreading out our time periods past art of the middle ages and renaissance, our stroll through the almost empty modern museum was a success.