C.white friend, black velvet dress, Greta Garbo brown hair and icy eyes. In a famous photo of 1943 by Ghitta Carell – the photographer who also immortalized Mussolini – Palma Bucarelli expresses a magnetic personality: she is elegant, proud and “as beautiful as a Siamese cat” as the poet Ungaretti said of her. She is 33 years old and the allure of a movie star. But she is also an intelligent and unconventional woman. In an era like the fascist one that promotes the female model of wife and mother, she builds a career that will lead her to become, after the war, the first director of a public museum in Italy. Equipped with a brilliant intuition in grasping the trends of artwill revolutionize the gallery he will head in the name of modernity.
Palma Bucarelli in 1949 With Carlo Fontana, in front of the Farinata degli Uberti sculpture. (Photo A3 / Contrast)
It is 1910 when he sees the light in Rome the eldest daughter of Giuseppe Bucarelli, Calabrian, graduated in law and state official, and his wife Ester, Sicilian, theater actress, who left the stage for the family. He grows up with the determination of a champion: he paints, excelled in the Classical and then enrolled in Literature, where he met the history of art on his path. Together with a university friend, Carlo Giulio Argan – who will be one of the men in his life and an inseparable friend – Palma is studying for the competition of inspector of antiquities and fine arts. At 23, he gets his first job. He certainly doesn’t look like a bookworm: he loves skiing, even off-piste, and soon gets his license. Machines are his passion. As recalled by the historian and art critic Rachele Ferrario, author of the captivating biography of Bucarelli entitled Queen of Hearts (Mondadori, 2010), later on he will present himself at his museum in Valle Giulia «aboard a flame red convertible, with hair in the wind and a fluttering scarf around his neck like Isadora Duncan». And in 1956 she will fall in love with a yellow gold 1100. She loves fashion, but for the moment she is content with creations that she pays in installments. The turning point came in 1936, when during a vacation he met the journalist of Corriere della Sera Paolo Monelli. She is 25 years old, he is about twenty years old and he is married. They won’t break up until his death in 1984, but theirs won’t be a conventional romance. Palma doesn’t want a man to live with under the same roof. Paolo is perfect: he loves her, he fills her with expensive gifts, he is her most trusted advisor. But he has a wife and his work often forces him abroad. In Rome, Monelli opens many doors to her, introduces her to fellow journalists and writers, and intercedes for her with Minister Bottai to get her a transfer.
Abstract art emerges
At the end of 1939, she arrived at the Gallery of Modern Art (Gnam) as an inspector. Her superintendent is Roberto Papini, who falls in love with her but at the same time makes her life difficult. The museum’s collection ranges from the nineteenth to the twentieth century and Palma paws to participate in new acquisitions and to be present at the events that matter, such as the Venice Biennale. When she and Papini reach the head-on collision, Palma wins: in 1941 she takes her place. She will be the director of Gnam for almost 35 years.
Palma Bucarelli. Light / Contrast Institute
“Palmina is better than beautiful,” Monelli will say of her. Bucarelli demonstrates all his organizational genius when it is necessary to save the works during the war, which are moved first to Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola, then in 1944 to Castel Sant’Angelo. At the end of that year, Gnam reopens and the world of artists is back in turmoil. S.were the years in which abstract art emerged, which found the support of Palma, as opposed to the so-called figuratives, such as Guttuso, supported by the Communists. Choosing the artists to acquire and exhibit becomes more and more a political question. Bucarelli stands up to everyone, claiming the right to be able to decide on “his” Gallery, which since 1952 has also become his home. He has in fact created an apartment, where he lives with his beloved dogs – first the dachshund Ariperto, then the tramp Donatello. She even keeps two chickens, to have a fresh egg for breakfast. His ability to work, despite frequent migraines, becomes legendary. «Her collaborators are all very good, but she is unable to delegate and rarely finds satisfaction in the work done by another» writes Ferrario. She is a centralizer and has a bad temper. She manages her herd of suitors – they’ve never been lacking in her entire professional life – taking full advantage of them, while she struggles to bond with women. Among her friends, there will be the collector Mimì Pecci Blunt and the journalist Irene Brin; she with Peggy Guggenheim she won’t run badly. The Gnam Tsarina has brilliant ideas: she opens the halls on Sunday mornings and evenings, and transforms the museum into a welcoming space where you can discover contemporary art. Imagine a meeting place, with a vision that is ahead of the times.
A woman among men
Palma Bucarelli (March 16, 1910 – July 25, 1998), art critic and historian portrayed by Ghitta Carell in Rome around 1935. (Photo by Fototeca Gilardi / Getty Images)
What De Chirico, who hates it, defines the “museum of horrors of Valle Giulia” hosts sensational exhibitions: Picasso in 1953, Pollock and Kandinskij in 1958, Modigliani and Le Corbusier in 1959. It’s all thanks to Palma, who gives the Gallery an international flair. As her biographer tells us, she doesn’t just frequent art dealers, artists and museums, but also social circles. She loves theater and fashion shows, stylists give her clothes because they know that she is now a “socialite” who guarantees visibility. And her success has a positive effect on Yum. «We must not forget that she was a woman, and beautiful: a woman among men. This aroused anger, ”said art critic Lorenza Trucchi. There are those who crush his exhibitions and those who even scorn in Parliament when Bucarelli exhibited the Big Sack by Alberto Burri. Palma is accused of squandering state money: in reality, he had the work on loan. When he tries to host the launch of a line of Marcella Borghese lipsticks in the museum spaces, the Ministry he depends on prevents him.
Sunset
He was almost 50 when a love affair with Carlo Giulio Argan blossomed. He is also married, but they are united by an intellectual affinity, and will remain linked until his death in 1992. Meanwhile, Palma marries Paolo, who has become a widower, continuing to live in separate houses. Even the roaring years of Bucarelli’s career are heading towards sunset. Not even a hospitalization stops his work, however: he will write two books on Fautrier and Giacometti, and in the 1970s he will set up important exhibitions such as those on Klee, Manzoni, Morandi, Capogrossi. In 1975, at the age of 65, it was time to retire. The authoritative and authoritative director will have to leave her apartment at the museum, to move into a house in Parioli, where he will live with his art collection closed in boxes, which he will then donate to the Gallery. He died in July 1998 of pancreatic cancer. With her goes a discoverer of talents, a charismatic professional, a courageous woman, who knew how to live free from the mold and who in her own way was a feminist, in claiming equal rights and compensation in work for women.
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