KANDINSKY AND ITALY

KANDINSKY AND ITALY 

Curated by Elisabetta Barisoni and Emma Zanella

From 30th November 2025

MA*GA Museum presents a major retrospective centered on the figure of Vassily Kandinsky, one of the pioneers of abstract art.

Curated by Emma Zanella and Elisabetta Barisoni, and conceived and produced by the MA*GA Museum and the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia – Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna di Ca’ Pesaro – the exhibition focuses on the significance of the Russian master’s work and thought in relation to the European art scene and, in particular, the great era of Italian abstraction that developed between the 1930s and the 1950s.

Through 130 works – with masterpieces from Ca’ Pesaro, the MA*GA Museum, and prestigious public and private collections – the exhibition traces the birth of abstract art and its evolution in both Europe and Italy, a legacy that remains vital in contemporary creative language.

The exhibition opens with a broad section dedicated to the international cultural climate of the 1920s and 1930s, a period in which Kandinsky, through his teachings at the Bauhaus, profoundly influenced painting. His work engaged in an open dialogue with major figures of European Abstraction, such as Paul Klee, Jean Arp, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, and Antoni Tàpies, who shaped the emergence and enduring relevance of abstract art from the early days of the historical avant-gardes to the 1950s in Europe and Italy.

The second section delves into the deep yet complex relationship between Kandinsky and Italian artists. A pivotal moment was his solo exhibition at the Galleria del Milione in Milan in 1934, which sparked reflection and debate among Italian artists opposed to dominant figurative trends. The development and persistence of abstract art, from the historical avant-gardes to the 1950s, found expression in the languages of Lucio Fontana, Osvaldo Licini, Fausto Melotti, Manlio Rho, Enrico Prampolini, Atanasio Soldati, and Luigi Veronesi.

In the post-war period, Kandinsky’s thought and work remained central to the Italian art scene, thanks especially to key exhibitions such as Abstract and Concrete Art (Milan, 1947) and Abstract Art in Italy (Rome, 1948), as well as movements and groups like Forma (1947), MAC (1948), and Origine (1951). These helped bridge the gap between historical masters and younger artists seeking in Kandinsky a gateway to a new visual world. This is the focus of the third and final section, featuring works by Carla Accardi, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Piero Dorazio, Roberto Sebastián Matta, Achille Perilli, Antonio Sanfilippo, and Emilio Vedova.

The exhibition is supported by the Lombardy Region as part of Avviso Unico 2025, and is included in Varese Cultura 2030, a project promoted by the Province of Varese and funded by Fondazione Cariplo.