Umberto Prencipe e la Toscana. Tra Modernità e Tradizione

Painter and engraver extraordinarily productive, present at the main national and international shows, frequently awarded, Umberto Prencipe (Naples 1879 - Rome 1962), passes, in an independent way, through the first half of the XX century with his lyric and intimistic language, open to contemporary solutions but in the meantime strongly rooted to the romantic and symbolist culture.
Deep and fertile is his relation with Tuscany and above all with Lucca and its surroundings. It's mainly the time between 1914-1921 which is the richest in artworks and implications with the culture of Lucca.
It's a fundamental time, marked by the meeting with the painter Alceste Campriani, who was the director of the Isitituto di belle Arti in Lucca, and with post-macchiaioli artists (Antonio Antony De Witt, Moses Levy e Giuseppe Viner), sensitive, during that period, to the inputs from the French culture.
Crucial was his friendship with Ugo Ojetti, strong supporter of the need of reconcile the national tradition of '800 with the Cézanne's modernity. 109 artworks (paintings, drawings and etchings) will be shown. Among which those given tothe Fondazione Ragghianti by the artist's daughter, others coming from private collections and from the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Orvieto, from the Archivio Umberto Prencipe, the Museo nazionale di palazzo Mansi in Lucca, from the Galleria d'arte moderna di palazzo Pitti in Florence, from the Galleria d'arte moderna di Roma Capitale and the Galleria d'arte moderna e contemporanea in Viareggio.