Byzantine goldsmith, 13th century

Reliquary

Genoese silversmith based on a design by Francesco Maria Schiaffino, 1747 - 1748

Sculpture

Silversmiths active in Genoa, mid-16th century - early 17th century

Sculpture

Syrian manufacture, 1st century AD

Manufacture

Idolo del prisma

Mitchell Wolfson Jr. 2007 Genova - donazione

Ferrazzi, Ferruccio

GX1993.473

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 159; Larghezza: 93

olio su tavola

In his portrayal of this enigmatic androgynous figure, traversed in the alienating reversal of perspective cuts by the dynamic reflections of mirrors, Ferrazzi adopted the fundamental stylistic tensions of the variegated Novecento culture, developing a personal process of synthesis between his modern aesthetic sensibility and the direct references to classical tradition, then prevalent in the international climate of the "return to order".
In particular, the Roman artist took up the tendency to blur the realist structure of the pictorial composition in the perceptive indeterminacy of an alienating and ambiguous representation: a visual oxymoron frequent in the magic realism current. In his works Ferrazzi often used the prism motif, which is central to the composition of synthetic simultaneity in this painting. He elaborated a balanced expressive dialectic between stylistic and iconographic references to the Renaissance tradition and references to Boccioni's aesthetics and the mechanicality of the mannequins by Depero, author in 1917 of a watercolour on the same subject.

Thomas Lawrence (Bristol, 1769-1830)

Letto piramidale

Mitchell Wolfson Jr. 2007 Genova - donazione

Fabbi, Fabio - Aroldi, Tommaso

GX1993.194

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 296; Larghezza: 275; Profondità: 280

legno di rovere scolpito e intarsiato

Having become the owner of the Ducal Palace in Guastalla in 1896, the entrepreneur Flavio Mossina – already living in the Congo, where he began to develop his passion for exoticism – began a series of restoration works on the building, to make it his home and the headquarters of the "Trancerie Mossina" company, one of the first and most important plywood factories in Italy. Among the rooms he designed, mention must be made of the Egyptian Room, from which the furnishings preserved at the Wolfsoniana come, and whose decorative apparatus – commissioned from the Orientalist painter Fabio Fabbi, the probable author of the project perhaps together with his brother Alberto, – was executed around 1917 by the painter and architect Tommaso Aroldi, who trained between 1885 and 1892 at the academies of Parma and Florence, where he was a pupil of Giovanni Fattori.
The Nineveh dresser and pyramidal bed exemplarily document the visionary and imaginative Orientalist spirit that stamped the chamber's artistic features: a pastiche that combined exotic and historicist suggestions from different eras and geographic areas, as attested by the extravagant figurative inventions of the woodwork elements on deposit at the Wolfsoniana, depicting myths and legends of kings, pharaohs, gods and heroes, set in remote moors, from the Far East to Latin America, recreating a seductive and imaginative exotic atmosphere. The reference to ancient Egypt, evoked in the monumental pyramidal headboard of the bed, dialogued, in the context of this sumptuous Orientalist reconstruction, with the fantastic view in the front of the dresser of the city of Nineveh, an ancient urban center on the left bank of the Tigris in northern Mesopotamia.
The peculiar aspect of the Egyptian Room in the Ducal Palace of Guastalla, however, is represented above all by the fact that-although at the time it was very much in vogue to propose, alongside historicist furnishings, oriental-style lounges, generically referred to by the term "Moorish" and habitually equipped with a fumoir – this room was intended not for social sharing, but for a more intimate and family-like enjoyment.

L'Autarca

Cesara Garbarino Mazzola e Dina L. Garbarino Cima 2007 Genova - donazione

Fasce, Angelo

GG2007.22

noce nazionale meridionale, acciaio, alluminio, vetro

Patented in 1936 as a "table containing everything necessary for serving meals", L'Autarca was designed in 1935 by the Genoese notary Angelo Fasce with the intention of offering six diners the possibility of eating a complete meal without the help of service staff.
Inspired by its basic function - full "convivial" self-sufficiency - its name recalled one of the most officiated precepts of fascism's civil liturgy: autarchy.
Fascist autarchic political action officially began in March 1936, in response to the sanctions issued by the League of Nations on 18 November 1935, after the Italian aggression against Ethiopia. A mobilisation in favour of economic independence and in support of national production had, however, begun to manifest itself in the years following the 1929 economic crisis, which had brought about those protectionist orientations consolidated by the economic blockade imposed by Geneva. A hammering propaganda, characterised by graphic solutions with a strong visual impact, by slogans that have remained famous (‘We will shoot straight’ or ‘Italy will do it by itself’) and by exhibitions of great appeal, such as the Autarchic Exhibition of Italian Minerals, was deployed to promote Italian products and to counteract the harmful effects of the embargo. Autarchy, which for some time seemed to contribute to the consolidation of the regime's image - distracting public opinion from the critical nature of its political action and its authoritarian and dictatorial nature - favoured above all the search for new materials, offering an extraordinary field of experimentation to the most innovative directions of Italian design.

La morte

Mitchell Wolfson Jr. 2007 Genova - donazione

Bistolfi, Leonardo

87.1111.6.1

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 72.5; Larghezza: 63; Profondità: 50

gesso

A promoter of the concept of the ‘socialism of beauty’, derived from the teachings of William Morris, Leonardo Bistolfi advocated the idea of the redevelopment of life and the democratisation of artistic enjoyment through the integration of all the arts into a single global project (Gesamtkunstwert, according to the German definition), which had been theorised by Henry Van de Velde as follows: ‘[...] we cannot admit any distinction aimed at establishing the superiority of one of the aspects of art, nor of one of its expressions over the others’.
In the preparatory sketches ‘Life and Death. Towards Light' made by Bistolfi for the Abegg tomb in Zurich, similarities can be discerned with the image of “L'Alpe” from his funeral monument for Giovanni Segantini in Saint-Moritz (1899-1906). In the seductive female figure, the artist's adherence to the stylistic characteristics of Liberty emerges. "Liberty" is the term with which, inspired by the name of Arthur Lasenby's London atelier Liberty, the art nouveau style was defined in Italy.

Poltrona per la stazione marittima Andrea Doria

Autorità Portuale di Genova 1998 Genova - donazione

Vietti, Luigi

GG1998.1

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 72; Larghezza: 60; Profondità: 66

legno di noce lamellare curvato

Quinta Esposizione internazionale delle arti decorative e industriali moderne - Milano, Palazzo dell’Arte - 6 maggio 1933

Vietti presented his armchair model already used in the furnishings of the Andrea Doria maritime station in Genoa, which had been operational for a few months but was officially inaugurated on 28 October 1933. Made of curved laminated plywood, the chair shows remarkable similarities with the famous cantilever seats in birch and plywood that the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto had designed starting in 1929 and exhibited in the Finnish section at the following Triennale. The simple and functional form and the choice of material made the armchair design perfect for industrial mass production. This attention to the new production processes also characterised Vietti's overall proposal, as Daneri did not fail to emphasise: ‘The furniture is interesting for the presence of numerous pieces of furniture that can be dismantled and stacked, to be arranged according to the needs and wishes of the occupant; the cupboards are all of a single type for standardised production and can be both placed side by side and on top of each other".