In collaboration with Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, MASI Lugano presents a selection of thirty Italian masterpieces created between the two wars by some of the most significant artists of the day: Carlo Carrà, Massimo Campigli, Giacomo Manzù, Ottone Rosai, Scipione and Mario Sironi. This outstanding group of works, which comes from key collections of Italian art, has recently been granted on long-term loan to Ca’ Pesaro- Galleria Internazionale d ’Arte Moderna- Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.

With the exception of Scipione and Manzù, who took more independent paths, all the artists featured embraced the principles of the so-called "Return to order" of the Novecento Italiano movement, which came about in the 1920s as a reaction to the avant-garde currents, and for some, the experience of war. Co-founded and supported by Margherita Sarfatti, this movement sought to reject the avant-garde – and Futurism in particular – by reviving the classical forms and simplified composition of the Italian primitive tradition and Renaissance art. In aesthetic terms the paintings on display thus share a desire for simplicity, harmony and pared-down forms, and this is a direction that can also be observed in European art from the 1920s to the 1950s.