Il Polittico + 39 06 6832574
Il Polittico

Il Polittico was founded in 1990. It is located in Rome, via dei Banchi Vecchi, at number 135.

The show debut was held in May 1991 with an exhibition of drawings by the composer Sylvano Bussotti, that documented a creative path, parallel to the musical one, from the end of the Forties to the Nineties.

Ever since Il Polittico realized numerous exhibitions, between personal and collective, presenting, among others, artists of talent such as Alberto Abate, Rosetta Acerbi, Giovanni Arcangeli, Luciano Bartolini, Ubaldo Bartolini, Angelo Bellobono, Giuseppe Bergomi, Carlo Bertocci, Giuseppe Biagi, Andrea Boldrini, Lorenzo Bonechi, Aurelio Bulzatti, Sergio Ceccotti, Elvio Chiricozzi, Eleonora Ciroli, Silvia Codignola, Marco Cornini, Luca Crocicchi, Silvano D'Ambrosio, Franco de Courten, Emilio D'Elia, Paolo dell'Aquila, Aron Demetz, Stefano Di Stasio, Angelo Fabbri, Stefania Fabrizi, Mario Fani, Paolo Fiorentino, Lino Frongia, Paola Gandolfi, Massimo Livadiotti, Elio Marchegiani, Tito Marci, Salvatore Marrone, Nicola Maria Martino, Stefania Mileto, Alberto Mingotti, Gian Marco Montesano, Fabrizio Passarella, Massimo Pedrazzi, Marco Petrus, Simone Piccioni, Luca Pignatelli, Franco Piruca, Salvatore Pulvirenti, Mauro Reggio, Lithian Ricci, Salvo Russo, Livio Scarpella, Paolo Schmidlin, Gianni Stefanon, Giuseppe Tirelli, Giorgio Tonelli, Luciano Ventrone, Angela Volpi, Giovanni Zoda, Fernando Zucchi, among the Italian ones; Hermann Albert, Pedro Cano, Juanjo Castillo, Thomas Corey, Ramon Enrich, Juan Escauriaza, Carlos Forns Bada, Alberto Gálvez, Sean Henry, Harry Holland, Leander Kaiser, Ana Kapor, Anna Keen, John Kirby, Jan Knap, Miguel Ángel Iglesias, Jesús Mari Lazkano, David Ligare, Edward Lucie-Smith, Sigfrido Martín Begué, Stephen McKenna, Klaus Karl Mehrkens, Franz Mölk, Ulf Nilsen, Philip Pearlstein, Lily Salvo, Alicia Sancha, Erhard Stöbe, Renny Tait, Dino Valls, among foreigners. In addition, is particularly important the attention that Il Polittico reserves to the work of young and very young artists, to their beginnings or to their first significant exhibitions. Moreover, a lot of interest was aroused by the exhibition of the illustrator and drawer Ettore Viola, entirely dedicated to Il Gattopardo, between Tomasi di Lampedusa and Luchino Visconti, and accompanied by a catalogue published by Sellerio Edition in Palermo.
           
The Association is interested primarily, if not exclusively, in the current painting of image and figure, in every possible lexical and pictorial declination. Recently, then, Il Polittico has extended its exhibition interests also to the most recent sculpture of image. As for painting, II Polittico has followed particularly the artists that, during the Eighties, have been part of theoretical names such as Pittura Colta and Anacronismo.
           
On these names the historical process is already largely underway, proof of this are the mentions in prestigious and influential publications such as the Encyclopedia of Pittura in Italia, published by Electa; the fourth volume of Arte Contemporanea, La linea del modello - Arte come progetto del mondo edited by Giunti; ArToday, published by Phaidon, Movements in Art since 1945, published by Thames & Hudson, Flora, published by Taschen, Art Tomorrow, published by Terrail, all of four cured by Edward Lucie-Smith, and many others dictionaries and books of contemporary art.


Among the most important initiatives of Il Polittico must be reported:
 

  • The exhibition dedicated to San Filippo Neri for the fourth centenary of his death, with works realized on purpose and placed in the side chapels of the left aisle of Santa Maria in Vallicella, the Chiesa Nuova in  Rome and later in the Church of San Filippo Neri in Vicenza. One of these works was purchased by the Pontifical Institute of Archaeological Studies, for the interest of Cardinal Francesco Marchisano, and was placed in the meetings hall;

  • Misure Uniche, the group exhibition of thirty-two Italian artists presented at the Italian Cultural Institutes of Lyon and Grenoble (France), Porto (Portugal), Brussels (Belgium);

  • Il Progetto dell’Essenza, collecting Italian artists presented at the Sursock Museum of Beirut in Lebanon, and that continued at prestigious galleries and museums in the cities of Damascus, Amman, Cairo, Alexandria, Istanbul, Ankara, Belgrade, Bucharest, Zagreb, Ossijek; 
      
  • Passeggiata Italiana, a group exhibition of Italian artists presented at centres of culture, museums and galleries in Brisbane, Cairns, Melbourne, Townsville, Sunshine Coast, Australia. And, previously, at Sana'a, in Yemen;

  • The anthology of the artist Massimo Livadiotti at the Museum Petöfi in Budapest;

  • La Pittura Ritrovata 1978-1998, Twenty years of realignment to painting image, a group exhibition of Italian and European artists, realized with  the contribution and the patronage of the Municipality of Rome, the Cultural Policies Department, held at the Museo del Risorgimento, Complesso del Vittoriano, Rome. The exhibition had more than thirty thousand visitors;

  • Nativity, a group exhibition of fifteen Italian artists on the theme of the Nativity held at the Sint-Jozefsparochie te Oostende, with the care of the Museum voor Moderne Kunst Oostende (Belgium);

  • D'Après - Tosca, an exhibition for the centenary of the first performance of Giacomo Puccini, at the central Foyer of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, with paintings realized on purpose by nine artists;

  • The exhibition Via Crucis at the Church of Saint Lucia del Gonfalone in Rome with sixteen paintings especially made by Italian and European artists;

  • Natività, always at the Church of Saint Lucia del Gonfalone in Rome, a revised version of the exhibition presented the previous year to Oostende in Belgium;

  • D'Après - Un Ballo in Maschera, an exhibition for the celebration year of the centenary of the death of Giuseppe Verdi, at the central Foyer of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, with paintings especially realized by ten artists;

  • Cantieri Romani, realized with the contribution and the patronage of the Municipality of Rome, the Cultural Policies Department, and the purchase of works by the Roman Agency for the Preparation of the Jubilee, the exhibition was held at the Galleria Comunale of Modern and Contemporary Art of the city of Rome, today MACRO;

  • La Pittura delle Gioie, realized as part of Italy events in Japan in 2001, on behalf of Bulgari SpA, held at the Tokyo International Forum, from 5 to 14 October 2001; at the Kyoto Takashimaya, from 17 to 31 October 2001, and at the Isetan Tokyo Museum, from 13 to 18 December 2001;

  • The exhibition Il Figlio Prodigo, held at the Church of Santa Lucia del Gonfalone in Rome with twelve paintings especially made by Italian and European artists;

  • The exhibition N'ebbe compassione on the subject of the Good Samaritan, always at the Church of Santa Lucia del Gonfalone in Rome, with nine paintings realized on purpose by Italian and European artists;

  • The exhibition Die Wiedergefundene Malerei - Eine europäische Situation, at the Kunstraum Palais Porcia Vienna, for the interest of Dr. Klaus Wölfer (Director of the Department of Culture of Austrian Chancellery), and with European artists Alberto Abate, Hermann Albert, Christy Astuy, Ubaldo Bartolini, Carlo Bertocci, Stefano Di Stasio, Carlos Forns Bada, Paola Gandolfi, Harry Holland, Leander Kaiser, John Kirby, Sigfrido Martín Begué, Lily Salvo, Erhard Stöbe;

  • The exhibition Per Amore (The Caggiano Collection), held at the Complex of St. Sophia in Salerno, with the patronage and contribution of the Municipality and the Province of Salerno, in April and May 2004, with two hundred and thirty works from the personal collection of Massimo Caggiano;

  • The exhibition Lucia di Siracusa, dedicated to the Saint for the one thousand seven hundredth anniversary of her beheading, held in the church entitled to her in Rome with four paintings realized on purpose by the artists Carlo Bertocci, Alberto Gálvez, Stefania Fabrizi, Lily Salvo;

  • The exhibition Chiaroscuro, cured by John Kirby, at the Flowers East Gallery in London, with the artists Giuseppe Bergomi, Andrea Boldrini, Eleonora Ciroli, Paolo dell'Aquila, Aron Demetz, Stefano Di Stasio, Stefania Fabrizi, Carlos Forns Bada, Paola Gandolfi, Anna Keen, Alberto Mingotti, Lithian Ricci, Livio Scarpella, Giuseppe Tirelli, Dino Valls;

  • The exhibition Quindici Anni  held at the Scuderie Aldobrandini in Frascati (Rome), with the patronage of the Senate of the Italian Republic, the Lazio Region, the Province of Rome and the Municipality of Frascati, in April, May and June 2006, with sixty-five works, including paintings and sculptures, illustrative of the quality work realized in fifteen years of activity by our Association. The exhibition has been highly successful for press and public;

  • The exhibition Job, on the biblical theme, at the Church of Santa Lucia del Gonfalone in Rome with paintings especially realized by the artists Carlo Bertocci, Paolo dell'Aquila, Alberto Gálvez, Anna Keen, John Kirby, Jan Knap, Lithian Ricci, Salvo Russo, Angela Volpi;

  • The placement of paintings by Alberto Abate, Carlo Bertocci, Eleonora Ciroli, Mario Fani, Harry Holland, Mauro Reggio, Salvo Russo, Lily Salvo, and sculptures by Aron Demetz, Alberto Mingotti and Livio Scarpella in the permanent collection of the Senate of the Italian Republic (Palazzo Giustiniani);

  • The implementation of portraits of Francesco Cossiga, Carlo Scognamiglio Pasini, Amintore Fanfani, Cesare Merzagora, Giovanni Malagodi, Giovanni Spadolini, Franco Marini, Presidents of the Senate of the Italian Republic realized by, respectively, Giulio Durini Monza, Stefano Di Stasio, Angela Volpi, Carlo Bertocci, for the costituenda gallery of portraits of Presidents of the Senate, in the permanent collection of Palazzo Madama in Rome. And the concerning book of documentation cured by Massimo Caggiano with the critical text by Arnaldo Romani Brizzi;  

  • The placement, permanently, of four board in the Church of Saint Lucia del Gonfalone. The first, realized by Carlo Bertocci, on interest and partial funding of the family of the Blessed, was dedicated to the Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and placed in the first chapel on the left of the church. The second, by Stefania Fabrizi, is a tribute to the memory of the fifty Martyrs Clarettiani of Barbastro and was placed in the first chapel on the right. The third opera, by Franco Giletta, celebrates the founder of the Clarettiani, Antonio Maria Claret, and is always placed in the first chapel on the left, in front of the art work dedicated to the Blessed Frassati. The fourth, by the British John Kirby, is dedicated to Jesus, as a child and as Christ the King; it is set in the third chapel on the right;

  • The implementation of monographic books Alberto Abate, Carlo Bertocci, Stefano Di Stasio, Paola Gandolfi (Italian) and Carlos Forns Bada (Spanish), John Kirby (British), Philip Pearlstein (American), Harry Holland (British), cured by the British art historian Edward Lucie-Smith, these books collect, on colour, almost the entire corpus of works of the seven artists;

  • The edition of the book Storie molte volte narrate, mythological stories brought back to a fairy tales reading for children, written by Antonio Malaschini, General Secretary of the Senate of the Italian Republic, and illustrated on colour by Carlos Forns Bada, Fernando Zucchi, Alberto Gálvez, Stefania Fabrizi, Eleonora Ciroli, Anna Keen, Livio Scarpella, Carlo Bertocci, Salvo Russo;

  • The realization of the catalogue of the group exhibition Apollo e Dioniso, cured by Vittorio Sgarbi, held during the Festival del Sole in Cortona;

  • The realization of the book-catalogue Presidenti ritratti, for the Senate of the Italian Republic, with a text by Arnaldo Romani Brizzi, as a document of six of the seven portraits made so far of some of the President of the Senate, such as: Francesco Cossiga, Amintore Fanfani, Nicola Mancino, Cesare Merzagora, Carlo Scognamiglio Pasini, Giovanni Spadolinii;

  • The care of the Fiocchi Collection of Ascoli Piceno and in particular of the section of the 40x30 works, especially created by two hundred and forty artists;

  • The care of a particular section of the Collection of Nicola Bulgari in Rome, with works especially created by numerous artists, with the presence of the jewels in the field of the new painting of image, works installed at the General Direction of the Bulgari SpA in Rome;

  • The art consulting given to Bulgari SpA for the placement of paintings, mainly dedicated to the city of Rome, point of departure of the fortunes of the famous brand, set in the various company stores all over the world;

  • The art consulting given to Sir Rocco Forte & Family SpA for the placement of paintings at some new hotels of the group;

  • The art consulting given to Starwood, for the set up of paintings at the Hotel St. Regis Grand and Westin Excelsior Rome, with the creation of suites personalized by the pictorial art of some artists, not just Roman, such as Mauro Reggio, Anna Keen, Paolo Fiorentino, Simone Piccioni.

On the editions of the catalogues of Il Polittico collaborated, as well as the Artistic Director of the Association Arnaldo Romani Brizzi, critics and art historians as Lorenza Trucchi, Giuliano Briganti, Fabio Benzi, Giuseppe Gatt, Roberto Daolio, Antonio D'Avossa, Marco Di Capua, Flaminio Gualdoni, Sergio Rossi, Marco Lorandi, Lea Mattarella, Sania Papa, Gabriele Perretta, Duccio Trombadori, Ludovico Pratesi, Paolo Balmas, Alessandro Riva, Edward Lucie-Smith, Bruno Mantura, Manuela Alessandra Filippi, Lisa Geddes da Filicaja, Carlo Fabrizio Carli, Lorenzo Canova, Marcello Pezza, Marco Tonelli, Arturo Schwarz, the literary critic and storyteller Giuseppe Scaraffìa; the architect and historian of architecture Ugo Cantone; the design historian Enzo Biffi Gentili, the architects Luca Scacchetti and Marco Rietti, the musicologists Domenico Danzuso, Umberto Nicoletti Altimari, the historian of photography Michele Falzone del Barbarò, the founder of Psiconalisi Contro, Sandro Gindro, the surgeon Paolo Barillari, the Spanish philosopher, an expert of communications science, Maite Carpio, and the writers Salvatore Silvano Nigro, Fernanda Pivano, Giovanna Giordano; the poets Ugo Entità, Angelo Scandurra, Robert Severino, Carmelo Zaffara; the scholar on angelic matter, historian of religions, Igor Sibaldi; the historian of religions Gian Roberto Scarcia; the religious father Paolo Zanutel and father Franco Incampo; the artists Alberto Abate, Carlo Bertocci, Massimo Catalani, Emilio D'Elia, John Kirby, Jesús Mari Lazkano, Massimo Livadiotti, Fabrizio Passarella, Franco Piruca, Lithian Ricci and the film director Carlos Saura.

It should be underlined the current ongoing collaboration of Il Polittico with the acclaimed British art historian and celebrated photographer, Edward Lucie-Smith.

Since a few years Il Polittico has also inaugurated a particular operative strand, entirely dedicated to Arts & Crafts, with the project (by Massimo Caggiano) and the production of objects and furniture in a limited edition, which are then painted by painters chosen time to time, or decorated, or left in the natural essences used.

Massimo Caggiano, from 1994, has realized several collections of furniture, catalogued under the names of planets and stars. These productions have been showed in 1999 in Milan, in via Solferino, and in Rome, at the space Design Innovation; in 2000 at the Italian Furniture Design Show - Chicago 2000, at the Merchandise Mart Properties in Chicago (USA); in 2001 in Los Angeles (USA), at the Space Snaidero;  in 2004 in Madrid, at the space Peccato Veniale; in 2005 in Madrid, at Casa Decor 2005.         

In 2005 it was opened the exhibition space Retablos, especially dedicated to these furniture and furnishing complements.