Un'altra modernità. Vittorio Pica e la Galleria Pesaro (1919-1929)

The article explores the long-lasting collaboration between the Italian art critic Vittorio Pica and the Jewish art merchant Lino Pesaro in the 1920s. Pica authored more than forty exhibition-catalogues at Pesaro Gallery in Milan (now fully available on the on-line database www.capti.it, in the section Letters and archival documents/Vittorio Pica/Exhibition catalogues), proposing a wide spectrum of options: from Italian Ottocento painters (Zandomeneghi) to Japanese and contemporary graphics (Maire, Moser, Carbonati, Chahine, Disertori, Delaunois, Liebermann, Rassenfosse), from decorative arts (Wolfers, Mazzuccotelli, Zecchin, Cadorin) to the sale of some important collections of Italian modern art (Chierichetti, Sacchi, Du Chéne de Vère), up to a selection of international artists exposing at the Venice Biennale in the 20s (Bernard, Balande, Grigorieff, Opsomer, Rudnay, and Besrodny, among others). In such a delicate equilibrium between criticism, market, collecting taste and personal choices, Pica affirms his solitary and yet unconventional vision of modern art in Fascist Italy, still strictly depending on the international visual sources of his late-naturalist and symbolist cosmopolitan cultural education.