Uncannily Real: Italian Painting of the 1920S

TEXT IN GERMAN

Around eighty paintings representing this style can be seen at the Museum Folkwang in autumn 2018, including major pieces by the key figures in the movement, Ubaldo Oppi, Antonio Donghi, and Felice Casorati, which enter into dialogue with works by such artists as Giorgio de Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, Carlo Carrà, and Gino Severini. In these pictures, painterly virtuosity never becomes a facile end in itself--the uncanny constantly lurks behind the familiar, and beneath the smooth surface we encounter the abyss. Between melancholy and idyll, between a weariness with civilization and the pathos of progress, the magic realism movement gave rise to some of the most atmospheric paintings of the twentieth century.