The first exhibition about the art historian who became the legendary superintendent of rome's national gallery of modern art from 1942 to 1975.
Palma Bucarelli, who died in 1998, is remembered as the great dame of Italian art. Fascinating, enterprising and worldly, she succeeded in managing the only gallery in Italy devoted to the art of the 19th and 20th centuries with a firm grip and far-sighted determination. She was appointed superintendent during the dark period of WWII, in 1942, and succeeded in saving the collection from the air raids. Just two years later, she re-opened the gallery, had the building restored and set about recalling works of art, including foreign artworks that had been removed during the Fascist Era in the name of autarchy, back to the gallery. In the ’50’s, with the assistance of young art critics like Maltese, Ponente and Calvesi, Bucarelli began to make a series of acquisitions: works of the Futurist movement, by Modigliani, Moranti and Savinio, and Abstract Art from Italy and abroad. The gallery became a lively center of cultural debate in Italy. Thanks to important exhibitions of work by great artists such as Picasso, Mondrian, Pollock, Malevic and Rothko, the gallery was thrown into the spotlight of the international artistic debate.