The project “The art of giving. A journey to discover the works donated to the Pinacoteca” continues in the Pinacoteca Civica of Como, an itinerary of unveiling paintings donated by patrons who, over the years, have donated pieces of art to the Civic Museums.

Since 2019, the Pinacoteca of Como has paid tribute to donors by presenting the works of art received in Campo quadro, the contemplative space on the main floor of Palazzo Volpi. An opportunity to appreciate and recognise all those who have demonstrated a fondness for the cultural institution, and thus enabling its continuous growth.

To further enrich the city collection aft25 the latest donation of a work by Giuliano Collina and the loan of eight paintings from the collection of the S. Anna Hospital picture gallery in Como, there are also six works by two great protagonists of rationalist painting, Carla Prina and Carla Badiali, which will be on display for the general public starting from Friday 19th September until Sunday 1st November 2020.

In particular, the Campo quadro space will host five works painted by the artist Carla Prina, donated by Bruna Pernice. Four of these works, in a figurative style and made with the oil on canvas technique, represent private scenes of family life, portraits of an intimate nature created by the artist as a tribute to the friendship that personally bound her to Ms Pernice and which clearly testify to her pictorial sensitivity that distinguished her in the period immediately preceding her conversion to abstractionism. Even if for some abstract artists the figure, the body and organic plasticism did not serve as points of reference, this was certainly not so for Carla Prina, well capable of treating the human figure in an academic way and transfiguring it plastically within some of her artistic compositions.
To these works is added the donation of “Omaggio a Beaubourg” (‘Tribute to Beaubourg’), which belongs to the artwork from the second half of the 1980s and which clearly incorporates some ideas belonging to the Como rationalist period. In fact, Carla Prina’s career was long and significant, always aimed at a very particular chromatic and geometric representation, devoted to a clear, volumetric, and dynamic colour resolution: “…. shape is born with colour…”.

The work by Carla Badiali, the absolute protagonist of rationalist painting, will instead be exhibited on the top floor of the Pinacoteca in the section dedicated to the abstractionists of the twentieth century: since the beginning of the year this section has undergone important comprehensive review and maintenance work with the addition – in the permanent exhibition path – of real artistic masterpieces such as “lo Studio” for a large fresco in the ‘Sala del Direttorio’ of the Casa del Fascio in Comoby Mario Radice in 1936, “Officina 3” and “Composizione” by Aldo Galli in the 1970s.
The untitled work by Carla Badiali, dated 1968, was donated by Ersilia Cantaluppi Ostinelli in memory of her husband Giuliano Cantaluppi.The couple both personally knew and visited the artist,whom they were bound to by a relationship of friendship and esteem.Mario Radice, Manlio Rho and Aldo Galli, the “Como Group”, steered her towards abstract painting and dialogue with architectural forms. Towards the end of the 1960s Badiali attempted the path of plastic experimentation: the donated work, defined as a “picture - object” by the art critic and historian Ivan Quaroni, consists, in fact, of a square board of ramin wood with inserts in bronzed and shiny brass that form an orthogonal grid of five rows of squares in slight relief, one of which is painted black.
The work adds to the small group of the artist’s pictorial and graphic works already present in the civic collections, thus allowing visitors to gain a greater understanding of the artist’s great expressive richness.