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Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art "Filippo de Pisis"
Alongside the masterpieces of Filippo de Pisis, the museum also preserves works by other important artists of the twentieth century, from Ferrara and elsewhere, offering a broad overview of the different currents and styles that characterized the last century.
The museum is closed for restoration.
The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art was named after Filippo de Pisis in 1996, following the exhibition celebrating the centenary of his birth and the donation to the city of Manlio and Franca Malabotta’s collection. This bequest, which enriched the museum’s already substantial de Pisis collection with more than 200 paintings and works on paper of extraordinary quality, made it possible to bring to life the largest and most important public collection of his work.
The collection illustrates every phase of De Pisis’ artistic journey: from his youthful works, inspired by the crepuscular climate and metaphysical painting, to the Parisian season in which he gave life to his very particular “pictorial shorthand”; from the paintings steeped in poetic and literary culture executed upon his return to Italy at the outbreak of war to the last melancholy still lifes created in the Villa Fiorita clinic in Brugherio.
The museum’s collections also include paintings and sculptures by major artists who were born or lived in Ferrara in the 20th century-among others Aroldo Bonzagni, Achille Funi, Mimì Quilici Buzzacchi, Roberto Melli and Mario Pozzati, and sculptors Arrigo Minerbi, Giuseppe Virgili, Annibale Zucchini and Enzo Nenci.
The twentieth-century collections also return significant examples of the articulated spectrum of Italian and international art with works by Mario Sironi, Luigi Veronesi, Osvaldo Licini, André Masson, Leonor Fini, Renato Guttuso, Andy Warhol, Giosetta Fioroni, Elio Marchegiani, Bice Lazzari, Nanda Vigo, and Gianfranco Notargiacono, to name a few. This is a relevant nucleus of drawings, paintings, prints and sculptures, formed through various bequests, especially during the exhibitions organized between 1963 and 1993 by the historic director of the galleries of Palazzo dei Diamanti Franco Farina. Finally, thanks to the recent and generous donation by Lola Bonora, the Ferrara museum has acquired Farina’s own private collection, which preserves significant evidence of Ferrara exponents-including Gianfranco Goberti, Maurizio Bonora, and Sergio Zanni-and Italian and international authors including Giorgio de Chirico, Josef Albers, Man Ray, Sebastian Matta, Alberto Burri, Emilio Vedova, Tancredi Parmeggiani, Mimmo Rotella, Enrico Baj, Robert Rauschenberg, Mario Schifano, and Gianni Colombo.
See also the worksheets on the Cultural Heritage of Emilia Romagna portal.
