Twentieth century section

With as many as 381 exhibits, the twentieth-century painting and sculpture section is the largest in Fondazione Cariplo’s collection.

The first three decades of the century are represented by the works of Milanese artists, like Michele Cascella whose appreciated activity bears witness to a persisting late nineteenth-century naturalist taste. Works by Leonardo Dudreville, Anselmo Bucci, Achille Funi and a later Mario Sironi illustrate the so-called “back to order” phase culminating in the Novecento movement led by the critical voice of Margherita Sarfatti, represented by few authors only. Also close to these Lombard masters in their twentieth-century vocation are Tuscans Ottone Rosai and Ardengo Soffici and Roman Antonio Donghi.

This section also contains works of other less easily classifiable artists though no less important at national level - Aldo Carpi, Raffaele De Grada, Donato Frisia and Arturo Tosi, the latter the head of the landscape school. Post World War II ‘Chiaristi’, also in the Cariplo collection, are Umberto Lilloni, Cristoforo De Amicis and Francesco De Rocchi, as well as new art exponents inspired by various French avant-garde such as Fiorenzo Tomea, Orfeo Tamburi, Renato Guttuso, Giulio Turcato, Remo Brindisi, Aligi Sassu and Ernesto Treccani, Sassu. Fondazione Cariplo is also the owner of Giacomo Manzù’s monumental bronze masterpiece celebrating Household Savings (Risparmio Familiare).