Giovanni Fattori, La diligenza a Sesto
Riccardo Molo’s collection, which remained undiscovered for 75 years and has now finally come to light, offers an
exemplary cross-section of a golden age of Italian art. It includes masterpieces by Fattori, Previati, Bianchi, Segantini, Delleani, Cabianca, Pasini and Delbono and
a selection of fifty paintings and sculptures from the collection are now going to be shown in
the exhibition “From Fattori to Previati. A newly discovered collection. Riccardo Molo, art collector in
Switzerland and Italy”, being held in Rancate (Mendrisio), in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland, at the Züst Art Gallery.
The exhibition, which has been curated by Sergio Rebora with the collaboration of Paolo
Plebani, presents a selection from the collection owned by Riccardo Molo, a businessman originally
from Ticino who, from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, spent some of his time when
travelling for work buying works of art. His collection does in fact consist of pieces acquired all
over the world, from Berlin to Rio de la Plata, Argentina, but bought mainly in Italy.
Molo’s passion for Italian nineteenth-century painting was an expression of the widespread
rediscovery that took place in the 1920s of the Macchiaioli painters and, in general, of the painting of the previous century.
Paintings from this period were now available on the market owing to the post-war dispersion of
many private collections. Riccardo Molo acquired various “pieces” in Milan between 1926 and 1928
when he attended two auctions of the important collection put together by the industrialist
Giuseppe Chierichetti, which was conspicuous for its inclusion of prominent artists of the second half of the Italian nineteenth century with forays into Art Nouveau, Secessionism and the Novecento Italiano movement. The frequent sales held by the
Galleria Geri also saw Riccardo Molo present among the buyers.
Riccardo Molo swelled his precious collection with paintings by artists from Lombardy (Mosè Bianchi, Pietro Bouvier, Gaetano
Previati, Giovanni Segantini), Piemonte (Lorenzo Delleani), Veneto (Vincenzo Cabianca, Antonio Fragiacomo, Marius Pictor), Emilia (Giovanni Muzioli, Alberto Pasini), Tuscany (Tito Conti, Giovanni Fattori, Ruggero Panerai) and Naples (Edoardo Dalbono). He also broadened his interest to include France, albeit purely with reference to the graphic art sector. Taking advantage of a huge number of works by Gaetano Previati coming onto the market following the death of Alberto Grubicy and
the winding up of his celebrated art gallery, Molo also acquired several important paintings by the
pointillist artist, including a preliminary version of Maternità (1891), a pivotal work in Previati’s career. Molo also established a
patronage-based relationship with Guido Gonzato, a young painter from Verona who had moved to the canton of Ticino:
he bought a select group of his paintings and, perhaps at Gonzato’s suggestion, added to his
collection a large canvas in the style of Casorati by Vincenzo De Stefani, the leader of the Veronese movement.
After Riccardo Molo died in 1934, the paintings in his collection ceased to be a subject for
study and until now have never been exhibited. In addition to the four works by Previati, the most outstanding pieces include Donna con calice by Bianchi, La lezione di recitazione by Cabianca, La coppia di Teste by Delleani, La diligenza a Sesto by Fattori, L’abbeveratoio by Fragiacomo, La casa di Satana by Marius Pictor and Cairo. Porta di un bazar by Pasini. These works, which were previously either considered to have been dispersed or entirely unknown, now help to complete the
catalogue of the respective artists and to broaden our knowledge of nineteenth-century painting and the history of its collection.
In memory of Riccardo Molo’s stay in the Ligurian region, where some of his businesses were based, the exhibition will
later transfer (from 6 March to 6 June 2010) to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Genova Nervi, where the paintings acquired by Molo will act as an ideal continuation of
the collection in the nearby Museo delle Raccolte Frugone and provide an interesting point of
comparison.
