NEW YORK, NY.- The Center for Italian Modern Art is presenting the first exhibition in the United States of the work of Alberto Savinio (1891–1952) in over two decades. Hailed by poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire as the paragon of a Renaissance man, Savinio was not only an exceptional visual artist and an integral member of the Parisian avant-garde, but also a gifted pianist, composer, musicologist, set designer, critic, and writer. Yet despite his brilliance and achievements, Savinio, the younger brother of Giorgio de Chirico, is today virtually unknown outside of Italy.

On view October 6, 2017– June 23, 2018, Alberto Savinio features 25 works, focusing on paintings produced by the artist after his move to Paris in 1926, when he put his other creative pursuits on hold in order to devote himself fully to painting. Dating from the late 1920s through the 1930s, these are accompanied by a select group of sculptures and prints by French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911– 2010), revealing the two artists’ serendipitous commonalities, including their flirtation with Surrealism, a shared interest in the subconscious, and, most significantly, the profound influence that familial relations had on their respective artistic imagery.

CIMA’s Executive Director, Heather Ewing, states, “CIMA is pleased to introduce Alberto Savinio to a wider audience through this exhibition, as well as through related programs that explore his multi-faceted artistic pursuits. Despite Savinio’s successes among the Parisian avant-garde—and the impact his work had both at the time, among the Surrealists, and later, with movements such as the Transavanguardia of the late 1970s and 1980s—he remains largely unknown to contemporary audiences both in the U.S and abroad. His work is not included in any public collections in the U.S., and he has only rarely been exhibited here. This exhibition therefore promises to be a real discovery as it brings his original work to light. We are also pleased to continue, with the work of Louise Bourgeois, our practice of juxtaposing artists from different generations, backgrounds, and genders.”

Alberto Savinio explores two major themes in the artist’s oeuvre: the expressive power of imagined landscapes and the fraught emotional terrain of family life. CIMA’s main gallery space is dedicated to the paintings in which Savinio conjures voyages to fantastical towns, islands, and magical places. With their unreal colors and curious forms, these works evoke deepseated memories or dream states, such as those (Monument to Toys), of 1930, or Les rois mages (The Magi) of 1929. Other scenes, populated with figures from ancient literature or myth, draw on the stories that shaped the artist’s childhood in Greece, as in Prometeo (Prometheus) or Le songe d’Achille (The Dream of Achilles), both of 1929.

Notably, two of the paintings here— La Cité des promesses (The City of Promises) and L’Ile des charmes (The Charmed Island)—were commissioned in 1928 by the famed art dealer Léonce Rosenberg for his private residence in Paris, where work hung alongside that of de Chirico, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, and others from Rosenberg’s roster of artists. (The Rosenberg apartment will be the subject of a Study Day at CIMA, in addition to a second daylong program devoted solely to Savinio in the spring.)

The exhibition continues in CIMA’s long hallway, with a series of paintings that explore the family unit as a site of perilous ambiguity. In these works, figures are often confined in claustrophobic spaces, a subject that Savinio shared with—and pursued more fully than—de Chirico. He sometimes transforms himself and other family members into living objects or figures with animal heads, seen here in paintings such as Jour de Reception (Receiving Day) of 1930, Autoritratto (Self - Portrait) of 1936, and I geni tori (The Parents), of 1931, thereby rendering the body monstrous and the portrait anonymous.

A 1947 suite of nine engravings by Bourgeois, entitled He Disappears into Complete Silence, is installed in the kitchen, together with a lithograph by Savinio, I miei genitori (My Parents), of 1946, also known as Poltro - babbo, poltro - mamma (Armchair - Dad, Armchair - Mom). The pairing underscores the two artists’ shared interest in using text and image to excavate personal, often ambiguous histories. Other works by Bourgeois in the exhibition include sculptures that bifurcate the body, such as Untitled , of 2002, and the iconic Nature Study, of 1984.

As CIMA President Laura Mattioli notes, “Like CIMA’s earlier pairings of Cy Twombly with Medardo Rosso, or Fabio Mauri with Fortunato Depero, the juxtaposition of works by Louise Bourgeois with those of Savinio will create new pathways for considering and understanding the older artist’s oeuvre.”