Stolen from the Van Gogh Musem in Amsterdam in 2002, recovered in Italy from a camorra hideout in September 2016 thanks to the work of the Financial Police and the Prosecutor of Naples, the two paintings by Vincent Van Gogh will be exhibited exclusively at the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples for only 20 days before their return to the Netherlands.

From Tuesday, 7^th until Sunday 26^th of February The Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen (1884-85) and Seascape at Scheveningen before a Storm (1882) – are key works for understanding the artist’s early development – will be exhibited on the second floor of the museum, next to the Caravaggio Room.

Seascape at Scheveningen before a Storm is one of only two seascapes of Scheveningen painted by the artist at that time, the other being kept at the Minnesota Marine Art Musem. The Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church of Nuenen is a work of sorrowful and intimate memory and family affection. It depicts the church of Nuenen village, where Van Gogh’s father was the pastor.

The exhibition is promoted by the Ministry of Cultural Assets, Activities and Tourism, the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, and financed by the Campania Region. The project is implemented by Scabec Spa. Organization and catalogue by Electa.

Opened on December 8th in the double seat of the National Museum of Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome and Giacomo Manzù Museum in Ardea (Rome), the exhibition Manzu. Dialogues on spirituality, with Lucio Fontana retraces, in the aftermath of the Jubilee of Mercy, the parallel experiences of the two sculptors with the liturgical commission in the 50s and 60s. The exhibition documents the common desire of the two artists – Giacomo Manzù (Bergamo, 1908 – Rome, 1991) to work for the Vatican, Lucio Fontana (Rosario, 1899 – Comabbio, 1968) for the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano – to renew the traditional iconography in contemporary terms and the fertile relationship that came to be created in this way with their respective stylistics developments.

Open until 5 March 2017, the exhibition is organized by the Museum Pole of Lazio under the auspices of the Pontifical Council for Culture and in collaboration with the municipality of Ardea and the Fondazione Giacomo Manzù. They have also collaborated Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Architecture and Design and the CSAC – Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione of Parma. The catalog is published by Electa.

Again in the capital – even for a few days (until 15 January 2017) – do not miss the exhibition Jean Arp, dedicated, fifty years after his death, to one of the major protagonists in contemporary art.

Staged in the Great Halls of the Baths of Diocletian, the large retrospective of French master is promoted by the Superintendence for the Colosseum and the central archaeological area of Rome and the Roman National Museum in collaboration with Electa: about 80 works, including sculptures, reliefs, tapestries and papier collés giving an overview of Arp’s wide-ranging experimentalism, from the first wooden reliefs of 1915 to the sculptures made from 1930 to 1966.

About two hundred photographs are at the core of Picasso Images. Works, Artist, Character. The exhibition outlines in new ways not only the path of an exceptional artist, but also the most intimate portrait of a man who has built its worldwide fame. The rich selection of images is accompanied by a significant selection of graphic works, sculptures and paintings from the Musée National Picasso -Paris that frame his artistic evolution.

The exhibition, promoted by Roma Capitale, Assessorato alla Crescita culturale – Sovrintentenza capitolina ai beni culturali, it is designed by Electa in collaboration with the Musée National Picasso – Paris and is organized with Zètema Progetto Cultura.

The exhibition is hosted at the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome until 19 February 2017.

The Museo del Novecento with Electa presents BOOM 60! That was Modern Art, an exhibition sponsored by the City of Milan – Culture, and dedicated to art from the early fifties to the early sixties and its reflection in the popular mass media.

The exhibition at the Museo del Novecento will run from October 18, 2016–March 12, 2017, curated by Mariella Milan and Desdemona Ventroni with Maria Grazia Messina and Antonello Negri. It inaugurates the new exhibition spaces with a complex layout between the Arengario and Piazzetta Reale with an exhibit design by Atelier Mendini.

The exhibition, thanks to the extension of the museum layout into the new galleries assigned to the museum, seeks to explore the themes of Italian art in the 20^th century while enriching the permanent museum layout. In the conception and choice of artworks, as well as loans from museums and public and private collections, it proved possible to draw on the rich collection of the Museo del Novecento: paintings and sculptures of the city’s heritage from the Boschi di Stefano collection, which is not on permanent display, and so makes a fascinating discovery.

BOOM 60! explores modern art as it was recounted from the early fifties to early sixties in the weekly and monthly illustrated press, the popular newsmagazines. 

These were the boom years, when not only the economy and consumption were soaring, but also the sales of illustrated weeklies and monthlies: Epoca, Tempo, Le Ore, Oggi, Gente, L’Europeo, Abc, Oggi, L’Espresso, Vie Nuove, La Domenica del Corriere, La Tribuna Illustrata, Successo, Panorama, L’Illustrazione Italiana, Settimana Incom Illustrata, Lo Specchio, Settimo Giorno. Their readership peaked in this period, with a circulation far greater than that of the newspapers, making them an important means of entertainment, as well as a faithful mirror of the collective outlook and aspirations. 

What emerges from the pages of these popular magazines is an alternative picture of modern art and its protagonists, contrasting with the evaluations of cultivated critics. Artistic innovations clashed with the expectations of the general public, who were highly suspicious of them. The magazines often fomented their readers’ prejudices, and at others sought to “educate” them by relating the art world to the forms of mass culture.

The exhibition, with a spectacular exhibit design by the Atelier Mendini, reflects these varied aspects of Italian visual culture in its decisive phase, drawing widely on the Milanese context, as the center of the major commercial publishing houses and much of the most advanced artistic research.

Some 140 works of painting, sculpture and graphic design – chosen in relation to their particular success in the mass media – create a dialogue in four sections: “Major Exhibitions and Controversies”, “Artists in the Magazines”, “Artists and Celebrities”, “The Market and Collecting”,  with the most popular photographic and TV illustrations of artworks and artists. A rich documentary section, like a great ‘’newsstand’’ from the past organized in  the Sala Archivi of the Museo, presents the public with the magazines and their different ways of recounting modern art, from the covers to feature articles, from criticism to advertising columns, from illustration to photojournalistic images, together with a selection of eight works from which the Dino Buzzati’s Piazza Duomo di Milano.