ddecided, in the time of the forced closures of the museums, to go and see it. I called the owner and president of the foundation, the painting friend I had seen in his house, with his attentive and loving wife, and I attempted an appointment that failed, postponing it to better times. There were noneand the great darkness fell which made it difficult even to talk on the phone. So I waited until today to go to Palazzo Merulana.
The occasion was a request from Alessandra Cerasi, the beautiful and kind daughter of the founder, from that Claudio I had called, not thinking for the last time, and who is no longer here today. I see his open face again in two portraits, with his wife Elena, by Stefano Di Stasio and Bernardo Siciliano. He’s gone, but he’s there, and his creature speaks for him and for his enthusiasm.
Merulana Palace in Rome
An unexpected museum, with bright and tidy spaces where I see the paintings of the Roman school and the Italian ‘900 that I had seen at his house. Rarely does a collection, moved from familiar environments, in the comfort of lived space, find a perfect arrangement like that of Palace that takes its name from the street where Gadda set his “ugly mess“a primarily literary place in the Rome of the two churches of Santa Maria Maggiore and San Giovanni in Laterano, along the Monti and Esquilino districts.
Alberto Ziveri, Woman with Monkey (1937).
Claudio Cerasi, with the humility and intelligence that public administrations and architects do not have (as shown by the insolent intervention, not far away, in Piazza Dante, in the building of the postal savings banks, now the headquarters of the secret services), has reconstructed the destroyed and abandoned building of the Health Office, to the point of making it a solemn space like a museum of the early 1900s, an extension of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. Surprise exceeds expectations; and for some time now Gnam has distanced herself from her story due to director Cristiana Collu’s research anxiety. But when you enter Palazzo Merulana you are inside the fascinating history of 20th century Roman painting. Claudio Cerasi’s dream has become a museum reality that corresponds to an era that I have seen slowly reborn, from the end of the 70s, thanks to the commitment of Antonello Trombadori, Miriam Mafai, Maurizio Fagiolo Dell’Arco, and two extraordinary gallerists: Lucia Torossi and Netta Vespignani.
Twentieth-century art in Rome
The 1980s were a great moment of historical rethinking, and what, in a more variegated and polyphonic way, was Margherita Sarfatti’s twentieth century in Milan returned to Rome. Rome was emerging from a long hibernation, during which only Giorgio De Chirico was awake. We saw the reappearance of great artists whose names were practically unknown, except for Scipione and Mafai, who for various reasons were protected from the market. But many submerged people re-emerged: Ferruccio Ferrazzi, Riccardo Francalancia, Francesco Trombadori, Emanuele Cavalli, Guglielmo Janni, Alberto Ziveri, the last tenaciously alive until 1990, forgotten. And then the women: Katy Castellucci, Pasquarosa and, with irrepressible power, Antonietta Raphael.
The Roman School at Palazzo Merulana
Here is the Roman School, with some ingenious strangers: Leoncillo of Spoleto, Roberto Melli of Ferrara, Fausto Pirandello, great son of the great playwright. All are hosted, on clear walls, confirming the goodness of critical rehabilitationat Palazzo Merulana.
Claudio and Elena Cerasi were active witnesses of the need for that critical process, which I observed during the years of my training with astonishment and enthusiasm, to the point of seeing it grow to the absolute level of expressive force, alive, bloody of Scipione, a great master, classic and calm, like Antonio Donghi. The luminous, Pierfranceschian need for him was avoided by Roberto Longhi, who preferred Sciltian to him. But Donghi has established himself with the purity of his forms.
It’s nice to see how this instance was intercepted by the Cerasi who chased the archetype of Piero della Francesca in the first half of Alberto Ziveri and above all in the unthinkable youthful experience of a very lucky painter: Giuseppe Capogrossi. Cerasi, in difficult times, intercepted two of his masterpieces: Gita in barca of 1932 and Dance on the river of 1936. And to find them in the luminous spaces of Palazzo Merulana, alongside the fire of Scipio and the psychic disturbance of Pirandello, is an emotion.
The Cerasis have created a perfect theorem, constituting a collection that flanked the critical rediscovery of the Roman school and its various aspects. Each purchase was like a demonstrated theorem, on the parallel streets of the Roman school, from the Apollonian to the Dionysian condition, cohabiting and complementary. Palazzo Merulana is the museum of an otherwise dispersed era, like an archaeological excavation in the 1900s, and culminates with two contrasting masterpieces: the Woman with monkey, dramatic and goyesque, by Alberto Ziveri and the Composition with figures, like an Italian Balthus, by Franco Gentilini. You leave Palazzo Merulana happy and grateful.
info: Palazzomerulana.it
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