Vatican Museums

The selection exemplifies the tendency from after the First World War onwards to favour a return to forms and styles drawn from the past. With respect to avant-garde research, the great Italian artistic tradition is recovered and a language more faithful to reality is developed: simple figuration, linked to intimate subjects, landscapes, portraits and still lifes. The artists presented in these two rooms are among the key figures of this season. In the first two decades of the century their paths intersected: Carrà and Severini took part in the futurist experience; Carrà and De Pisis belonged to the Metaphysical art movement; all were present in the first exhibition of the Novecento italiano, organised in 1926 by Sarfatti; and Carrà and Severini signed the Manifesto della Pittura murale, the Manifesto of wall painting written in 1933 by Mario Sironi. The works on display show the variety of interpretations that these artists propose in the representation of the human figure, still life, the city and episodes drawn from the Sacred Scriptures.