Estorick Collection

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EXHIBITION

6 October 2021 - 19 December 2021

In autumn 2021, the Estorick’s entire collection of modern Italian art was on show throughout the museum’s six galleries in a new exhibition, Estorick Collection Uncut.

Who’s Afraid of Drawing? Works on Paper from the Ramo Collection

EXHIBITION

17 April 2019 - 23 June 2019

Milan’s Ramo Collection comprises nearly 600 works on paper by artists belonging to some of the most important movements and tendencies in twentieth-century Italian art. This exhibition – the first to present a selection of drawings from the Collection outside Italy – explored the discipline as more than just a ‘preparatory’ activity, considering it as an art form in its own right.

A New Figurative Art 1920-1945: Works from the Giuseppe Iannaccone Collection

EXHIBITION

26 September 2018 - 23 December 2018

Since the early 1990s, Giuseppe Iannaccone has been amassing one of the most outstanding private collections of Italian art of the inter-war years. Presenting a large number of iconic works, this exhibition explored a crucial phase of Italian art history little-known outside its native country.

Peter de Francia and Renato Guttuso: A Friendship Across Europe

EXHIBITION

14 January 2015 - 4 April 2015

A selection of drawings by the British artist Peter de Francia made in Italy in the years 1947 to 1953. It is dedicated to the friendship between the two artists who met in post-war Italy.

Renato Guttuso: Painter of Modern Life

EXHIBITION

14 January 2015 - 4 April 2015

Renato Guttuso (1911-1987) is one of Italy’s most widely respected modern painters. Towards the end of the 1930s his powerful brand of expressionist realism vividly conveyed the angst of a generation which wanted its art to reflect and engage with the urgency of contemporary life. Rejecting both the formalism of abstract painting and the naturalism advocated by those on the far right of Fascism’s cultural establishment, Guttuso played a key role in forging a style that would go on to dominate Italian art during the immediate post-war years.

From Morandi to Guttuso: Masterpieces from the Alberto Della Ragione Collection

EXHIBITION

12 January 2011 - 3 April 2011

Containing works by artists including Filippo de Pisis, Fortunato Depero and Giorgio de Chirico, the collection of Alberto Della Ragione provides an extraordinarily comprehensive overview of Italian Modernism.

Against Mussolini: Art and the Fall of a Dictator

EXHIBITION

22 September 2010 - 19 December 2010

Whilst several major exhibitions have explored the propaganda imagery of Fascist Italy, art produced by those opposed to Mussolini and his regime has received surprisingly little attention. Against Mussolini brought together works produced in Italy and abroad throughout the Fascist era (1922- 43), but focused particularly on the period immediately after the dictator's fall from power following Italy's disastrous Second World War campaign. These last tragic years saw the re-emergence of Mussolini as the puppet leader of a Fascist administration in the north of the country and the onset of a bitter civil war, as the Resistance fought alongside the Allies to restore democracy and liberate Italy from tyranny.

Paper Trail: Prints from the Merlini Collection

EXHIBITION

16 April 2008 - 15 June 2008

Over a period of sixty years following the Second World War, Vito Merlini (1923-2007) amassed an extraordinary collection of prints whilst working as a doctor in his Tuscan home town of Peccioli. Following his first acquisition – a lithograph by Ardengo Soffici – the collection grew until by the turn of the century it numbered around 1,000 works, comprising prints by both Italian and international artists from de Chirico to Mirò, Guttuso to Sutherland. Towards the end of his life, 279 works from the collection were presented by Merlini to Peccioli, and it is from this donation that the exhibition was drawn.

A Decade of Discovery: Ten Years of the Estorick Collection

EXHIBITION

16 January 2008 - 6 April 2008

Comprising over 120 works by many of the most prominent Italian artists of the Modernist era, the Estorick Collection opened to the public in January 1998. Described by Sir Nicholas Serota as 'one of the finest collections of early 20th century Italian art anywhere in the world', it was formed in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Eric Estorick (1913-93), an American art-dealer, writer and political scientist, and is the only collection in the United Kingdom dedicated to this turbulent and fascinating period of Italian art.