Acquisitions 

The exhibition presents a selection of the artworks – prints, drawings, photographs, art- videos and books – received by Istituto centrale per la grafica in Rome through gifts or purchases made in recent years (2019-2022), a period in which, despite the scarcity of resources and all the limits imposed by the pandemic, the activities of safeguarding the heritage and enriching the collections continued without interruption. These artworks, heterogeneous in type and chronology, offer a view of the huge and varied heritage kept in the ICG, which ranges from baroque drawings to video-art, moving through graphic arts and photography. The importance of the protective action carried out by the Ministry of Culture through particular legal instruments is emphasized. This allowed the collections of the ICG to be enriched by the most important sheet of the exhibition: Sitzender Männerakt, a watercolor of 1910 by the famous Austrian artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918), an absolute rare presence, considering that works by this artist are hardly represented in the Italian public collections.

Con analoghe modalità di acquisizione sono entrati nei nostri fondi altri disegni di notevole pregio: un foglio di ambito berniniano (una scenografia ispirata a Piazza del Popolo); una
scena di battaglia di Guglielmo Cortese, detto il Borgognone (1628-1679); due grandi studi preparatori di Luigi Ademollo (1754-1849).

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The exhibition opens with the graphics of the twentieth century, works referring to the activities and relationships of Carlo Alberto Petrucci (1881-1963) and Alfredo Petrucci (1888-1969), who respectively directed the Chalcography and the National Cabinet of Prints in the period between the two wars and in the early years of the economic boom. The works on display testify in particular to the collecting taste and the artistic and popular activity of two leading figures in the study and promotion of ancient and modern graphics, as well as emblematic of the history of the Institute itself.

Among others, you can admire works by Alberto Martini, Mario Sironi, Umberto Prencipe, Luigi Bartolini, Anselmo Bucci and Duilio Cambellotti, and a rare tanka, an unpublished poetic composition by Harukichi Shimoi (1883-1954). Contemporary languages ​​are represented by works by Nunzio, Marisa Albanese, Nikè Arrighi Borghese and Lisetta Carmi, as well as those by artists of the latest generations such as Helen Cammock, Cascione & Lusciov and those acquired thanks to the Cantica 21 project for the celebration of the year dedicated to Dante, by Andrea Martinucci and Marta Roberti.