A thread connects the fresco The Triumph of Death, created by an anonymous master around the fifth decade of the 15th century for the courtyard of the Ospedale Grande of Palazzo Sclafani, then detached and preserved in Palazzo Abatellis; Guernica, Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece; and Crucifixion, created by Renato Guttuso in 1941.
The Crossings exhibition – The Triumph of Death, Guernica and Crucifixion by Guttusorelates for the first time, in an unprecedented and original way, the close connections between pictorial representations, always referred to by critics and never sufficiently documented. The exhibition will be inaugurated on Saturday 14 December at 5pm at Palazzo Abatellis, in Palermowhere it will be open until March 2, 2025. The exhibition is supported by the Department of Cultural Heritage of the Sicilian Region.
“We are truly proud to be able to present this international exhibition, the result of a fruitful collaboration between Abatellis and the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, the GNAM in Rome and the Reina Sofia in Madrid – intervenes the councilor for cultural heritage of the Sicilian Region, Francesco Paolo Scarpinato – an exhibition project that places Palermo and Sicily at the center of an important path of scientific research, on creative processes and works so significant for the history of art.”
The three works therefore activate a unitary dialogue, also thanks to an installation that favors (also visually) comparison: the monumental Triumphone of the best-known representations of the theme of Death who, on an imposing, skeletal horse, shoots lethal arrows towards the many characters who crowd a garden; the famous Guernica – in the tapestry (1976) arriving from the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, the second of three made by the weaver Jacqueline de La Baume-Dürrbach (one is exhibited in the headquarters of the UN Security Council) – which Picasso had created in just two months in 1937, denouncing the horror of the Italian-German bombings that had razed the Basque town of Guernica to the ground; and Crucifixion by Renato Guttusooil on canvas painted just four years later at the height of the Second World War, loaned by GNAM of Rome.
There are three posters figurative and stylistic works of exceptional impact that refer to each other and cross each other, involving and appealing to the contemporary human condition, conveying a universal and poignant message against all violence, in the name of peace, dignity and freedom.
To support the dialogue between the three masterpieces, according to the curatorial idea of Serena Baccaglini, Maddalena De Luca, Marco Carapezza, preparatory drawing of Guernica, on loan from the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid; drawings, photographs and materials that narrate the friendship between Picasso and Guttuso, the great influence of the master from Malaga on the great artist; and they tell of the long research of Renato Guttuso who made known and wanted to document the close relationship, the analogies and the details that exist between the Triumph of Death and Guernica.
Guttuso and Picasso met in 1947 (the following year Guttuso would write the critical text for Picasso’s first exhibition in Italy, at the Venice Biennale) and their friendship would continue until the death of the Master of Malaga in 1973.
“The exhibition is based on the great visual suggestion that connects the Triumph of Death of the mid-fifteenth century with Guernica by Pablo Picasso, from 1937 – explain Serena Baccaglini, Maddalena De Luca and Marco Carapezza – While considering the boldness of the historical-artistic comparison, a fruitful dialogue is established between masterpieces that not only address the same theme of the inexorability of death, but also refer to each other in terms of compositional structure and figurative. The head of the horse leading the personification of Death in the fresco is surprisingly almost completely replicated in Guernica”.
The connections and references between the three works are to be read as filigree in history, each deals with the universal theme of death and violence, but they intertwine in a powerful dialogue on human suffering and responsibilities: at the end of the nineteenth century the Palermo fresco still at Palazzo Sclafani, he was photographed by Giacomo Brogi, by the Alinari brothers, by Domenico Anderson; shots that could probably have been part of the over 15 thousand photographs accumulated by Pablo Picasso, often used as a source of inspiration or a tool to contaminate his paintings. Renato Guttuso says he deeply loved The Triumph of Death when he was on duty as an official cadet at Palazzo Sclafani.
“One day I spoke to Picasso: he knew the fresco, not directly but from illustrations” writes Guttuso. Struck by the explosive force of Guernica, known thanks to a postcard sent by Cesare Brandi from New York, in 1940 the painter from Bagheria (hidden under the pseudonym Telemaco on Il Selvaggio), noted: “looking at a large panel by Picasso I think back to the Triumph of Death by Palazzo Sclafani in Palermo… the two works have very strong links, but also formal links… there is almost an identity of patterns. The skeletal horse of the Triumph becomes Picasso mad (the head is almost the same). Even if Picasso knows this Triumph… he entered so deeply into the poetic mechanism of that drama that he produced an equivalent one.” The hypothesis is supported by the preparatory sketches for Guernica – one was loaned by the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid -, where the “head” of the horse demonstrates a close relationship with that protagonist of the Palermo fresco.
Also on display is an unpublished drawing by Guttuso with the two heads of the horses from Guernica and Trionfo compared. And Guttuso’s Crucifixion arrives on display at the GNAM in Rome, a work with a very strong dramatic charge, in angular and cubist forms, directly inspired by Guernica – Guttuso himself notes it – and at the same time, a tribute to the Triumph for the symbolic presence of the horse . A rich multimedia proposal allows you to discover documents and photos that tell the story of the friendship between the two artists, thanks also to the materials provided by the Guttuso Archives of Rome, partners of the exhibition. Among others, a writing by Renato Guttuso, “The great Sicilian equalizer” (1986), dedicated to the Palermo fresco, in which the painter reports that the Triumph was certainly known to Picasso, who knew it through photographs.