The museum area dedicated to the 20th century begins with some pieces by young artists who, in early 20th-century Monza, looked to avantgarde experiences and began to take paths that would renew local art. Gathered around the Cenobium group, a free and informal partnership of which critic Mario Buggelli was also a member and who we see here portrayed by Achille Funi, the young Eugenio Baioni, Guido Caprotti and Anselmo Bucci shared their perspectives on similar subjects. Evidence of this is in the three markets, the paintings that the three artists dedicated to the market place (now Piazza Trento e Trieste) animated by stalls for the traditional fair of San Giovanni. Brand new composition styles; views foreshortened for expressive effect; and deep, vibrant colours to portray the lively, loud atmosphere of the square, with its people and animals. Anselmo Bucci is the painter who more than any other, takes the path towards the renewal of artistic technique: he went to Paris, where he mixed with big names from the avantgarde – the “Pont Saint Michel” on display comes from this period – and, once back in Italy, he became a protagonist of the Italian Novecento, the movement founded by Margherita Sarfatti. Baioni, who would never leave Monza, focused on bronze sculptures and took part in the call for bids to make the monument to the fallen, with a sketch entitled “The Sacrifice”, while Caprotti left Italy to settle in Spain.
On the right side of the room – known as Sala delle Capriate thanks to the imposing structures made in wood recovered from the Casa degli Umiliati – are the paintings that came to the museum through the “Città di Monza” Painting awards organised in the 1950s. These competition-exhibitions brought works to Monza by Mario Radice, important exponent of Rationalism, with his “C.F. Composition” from the 1930s, when he collaborated with architect Giuseppe Terragni.
The city award had the merit of opening the collection’s horizons to the very latest experiences in Italian contemporary art, thanks to the participation of renowned artists at national level. Award-winners also included Giulio Turcato who, with his “Abstract Composition”, made between 1952 and 1953, manifested his adherence to the artistic movements behind abstractism.
Thanks to a donation, the collection now includes a pastel work by Renato Birolli, “The Mystics”, dated 1935 and featuring an exploration of the endless lyrical possibilities of colour and art as an act of poetic freedom.
Roman artist Fausto Pirandello offers a different experience with his award-winning “Nude in the Mirror”. The strongly expressionist features isolate the artist from the cultural world around him, without making him a stranger to it. Here he opts for a path to bring together the dualism of the period between abstractism and realism, using a language that does not renounce reality, but rather summarises and geometrizes it.