Cagliari, Powder Keg

The building of the former Polveriera Regia is the headquarters of the Municipal Art Gallery. The building is surrounded by greenery of the public gardens.
The building, built at the end of the 18th century, was originally home to the royal powder company. The elegant neoclassical façade was built in 1828 to a design by Carlo Boyl di Putifigari. It was transformed into an Art Gallery at the end of the twenties of the last century, by the Cagliari designer Ubaldo Badas.
The rooms of the Gallery currently house the Ingrao Collection and the Civic Collection of Sardinian Artists. The Ingrao Collection, donated to the City of Cagliari in 1999 following the death of the collector Francesco Paolo Ingrao, includes about 500 works including paintings, sculptures and drawings. An important nucleus through which it is possible to retrace fundamental stages of the evolution of Italian art in the early twentieth century: from Umberto Boccioni to Giorgio Morandi, from Fortunato Depero to Mino Maccari.
The Civic Collection of Sardinian Artists includes paintings and sculptures created between 1900 and 1970 by artists who made the history of art in Sardinia: among others, Costantino Nivola, Maria Lai, Gaetano Brundu, Tonino Casula, Pinuccio Sciola. Francesco Ciusa's beautiful original chalks have a strong emotional impact, including “The Mother of the Killed”, winner of the Venice Biennale in 1907. Inside the Gallery there is also the Ingrao Library, a scientific and bibliographic collection of works of art: it consists of about 4,000 volumes of mainly historical and artistic interest.

Bibliography:
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late 17th century to purist classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, sheet 65.