Sassari, Mario Sironi Collection

The collection is located in the Palazzo del Banco di Sardegna in Viale Umberto, and is located in the room where the board of directors holds its meetings. The collection consists of forty-two works by Mario Sironi (Sassari 1885 - Milan 1961), one of the great protagonists of twentieth-century Italian art. Trained in Rome with Balla, Boccioni and Severini, he was an exponent of futurism and an ardent fascist. He founded with others in 1922 the 'group of Seven Modern Painters', which formed the root of the 'Twentieth Century'. At the end of the 1920s, leaving easel painting, he set himself at the head of a movement for large wall decorations of civil value, more in line with his global conception of art, which united painting, sculpture and architecture. Until 1943, he exhibited in many European cities and participated in the most important international exhibitions. After the war, in his Milanese studio, he returned to easel painting. Sironi was a painter of solitude, between dark landscapes, suburbs and industrial buildings, men and women represented in the stiffness of stone. The works on display, almost entirely donated by his companion and universal heir Mimì Costa to the Bank of Sardinia, many of which are unpublished, consist of oils, tempera, mixed techniques, drawings and sculptures made between 1926 and 1958. The great painting Allegoria del Lavoro stands out, a preparatory study for the fresco created, with great success, in 1933 for the V Triennale in Milan. Among other works: Moses (1933), Studio for Fresco (1935), Studio for Interior Decoration (1938), Studies for Decoration (1938), Abstract Composition (1954). The collection is open to anyone interested.

Why it's important to visit it
Many of the works on display are unpublished. The highlight is the great painting Allegoria del Lavoro, a preparatory study for the fresco created, with great success, in 1933 for the V Triennale in Milan.