Experiencing a work of art requires that we maintain some distance, without which the experience would be weakened, but not too much distance, if we wish to keep the work’s density: we need to be “at close range”. Thus, at the reopening to the public of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art after the closure due to the health emergency in 2020, the works of Afro, Robert Adams, Franco Angeli, Stefano Arienti, Luciano Bartolini, Alberto Burri, Enrico Castellani, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Ettore Colla, Pietro Consagra, Daniela De Lorenzo, Giacomo Ginotti, Luisa Lambri, Bice Lazzari, Alberto Magnelli, Fausto Melotti, Paolo Meoni, Mirko, Gastone Novelli, Pino Pascali, Achille Perilli, Corrado Sassi, Toti Scialoja, preserved in the Gallery's repositories, have been arranged on the walls and tables of the Central Hall, activating new dialogues and connections with the works of the permanent exhibition with which they are composed and intertwined.

Rome, La Galleria Nazionale, May - October 2020

Contents

The Lion: Symbolic Fantasy and Ethological Truth
Chiara and Enrico Alleva

Inhabiting Distance
Pier Aldo Rovatti

Galleria Nazionale’s/is Work of Art
Valeria Lupo and Massimo Licoccia

Franco Angeli, Painter of Pain
Marcella Cossu

Monochrome, Painting’s Last Chance: Enrico Castellani’s 'Superficie N. 3'
Marcella Cossu

Burri, 'Cellotex A 5' 1980
Emanuela Garrone

The Measurement of Fixed Distances
Massimo Mininni

1865–2004. Friedrich Preller the Younger and Corrado Sassi, at Close Range
Chiara Stefani

Interviews with the Artists
by Francesca Palmieri

Exhibited Works

Works and Authors