On the occasion of the centennial of the Surrealist Movement, the Mart is dedicating an exhibition to Italian fantastic art, exploring a theme that has long remained in the shadows and is finally at the centre of recent studies and rediscoveries. As historiography has repeatedly pointed out, Italy is foreign to the Surrealist Movement, whose invention and maturation took place in France under the leadership of André Breton. Yet we owe it to Breton himself to identify two valuable antecedents to the Movement in the work of Giorgio de Chirico and Alberto Savinio.

Starting from these milestones and through episodes that have too long been considered lateral, the exhibition presents Italian 'surrealisms': a plurality of individual highlights and accents of original quality and creative autonomy, in constant dialogue with international circles and other fields of culture. In addition to the de Chirico and Savinio, 150 works by 70 artists are brought together. A very comprehensive catalogue that includes Leonor Fini, Fabrizio Clerici, Arturo Nathan, Gaetano Pompa, Stanislao Lepri, Enrico Colombotto Rosso, Italo Cremona, Gutavo Foppiani, Corrado Costa, Sergio Vacchi, Valerio Miroglio, Giordano Falzoni, Ugo Stepini, Enrico Donati, Adelchi Riccardo Mantovani, Romano Parmeggiani and Lorenzo Alessandri among others.

Divided into thematic sections, the exhibition traces the main strands of Italian Surrealism and their peculiarities, from the open dialogue on the past that has in de Chirico its restless 20th-century progenitor, to the influences that characterise certain expressions of Futurism, the Pop or post-informal scene, united by the perturbing principles typical of Surrealism, its vitalism and substantial stylistic richness.

The exhibition coexists with the monographic exhibit dedicated to the work of Luigi Serafini, in the same wing of the museum in a space that, from time to time, connects thanks to special passageways. De Chirico, the first modern Surrealist, thus yields the baton to many artists up to Luigi Serafini, the contemporary Italian fantasy artist capable of attracting around his work a rare set of admirers who, from Italo Calvino to Tim Burton, represent the best creativity of our time.

The exhibition is sustained by Altemasi and Cassa Rurale AltoGarda e Rovereto.