“Reality as Legend. Painting Between the Wars” symposium on magic realism

The major autumn exhibition Uncannily Real. Italian Painting of the 1920s at the Museum Folkwang presents  80 paintings from Magic Realism (Realismo Magico), an Italian art movement from the 1920s. Accompanying the exhibition, the symposium Reality as Legend. Painting Between the Wars will address themes and aspects of Magic Realism, outlining the current state of scholarly research and expanding it.  

The conference  will be held on November 23, 2018, 10am–6pm.

After the end of World War I, one of the most fascinating 20th-century artistic movements developed in Italy parallel to New Objectivity in Germany and formed a new style through to the beginning of the Second World War: Magic Realism. Geographically, its centre was in Milan, its main proponents Felice Casorati, Giorgio de Chirico, Antonio Donghi, Carlo Carrà and Cagnaccio di San Pietro. Even though Magic Realism seemed to peter out with beginning of World War II, it has proved a crucial impact on European as well as American painting and literature until today.

With view on the Italian development, the symposium Reality as Legend. Painting Between the Wars will focus on issues of how the term Realismo Magico should be defined and what constitutes the style. Moreover, aspects of its political and historical roots in the climate of Fascism, of the magic-real image, its self-referentiality as an aesthetic genre, its medium and its reception will be discussed. During the symposium, international experts will shed light on the precise stylistic and historical developments that engendered Magic Realism in Italy and explore its independence and specific qualities as a movement. Thus, the conference will build on the trailblazing research of the 1980s and 1990s, which, however, primarily focused on Magic Realism in relation to German Verism and New Objectivity. In their lectures and open discussions the scholars invited will present the latest research and rethink the art historical categorizations in light of what we know today.

With: Jean Clair, Art Historian, Author and Curator, Paris / Dr. Robert Thomas Cozzolino, Minneapolis Institute of Art / Prof. Dr. Olaf Peters, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg / Prof. Dr. Elena Pontiggia, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera / Prof. Dr. Michael Scheffel, Bergische Universität Wuppertal / Dr. Paola Valenti, Università degli Studi di Genova

Conference program. Conference languages: German/English/Italian/French (with interpreters)
Participation free of charge. Limited number of partipicants.
Registration: until November 14, 2018 at symposium [​at​] museum-folkwang.essen.de

Kindly supported by Alfred und Cläre Pott-Stiftung and Istituto Italiano di Cultura Colonia