Rosanna Purchia – Deputy Mayor for Culture of the City of Turin
City of Turin – Department for Cultural Policies, Museums and Libraries, Cultural Activities and Events, Historical Archives of the City of Turin
Square Palazzo di Città 1, 10122 Turin
phone +39 011 01124700
mail
assessora.purchia@comune.torino.it
Between spring and autumn 1902, Turin hosted the First International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Arts (Prima Esposizione di Arte Decorativa Moderna), which was held in the park of the Valentino Castle, Italy’s first public park, overlooking the banks of the Po and already the site of previous national and international exhibitions. A major event, just two years after the magnificent Exposition Universelle de Paris with over 50 million visitors. The Turin Exhibition, firmly pursued by a group of local artists, intellectuals and professionals, redeemed the “mediocrissima figura” of Italy at Paris Exposition Universelle of two years before and shaped a new city.
The specification “dell’Arte Nuova” is pervasive. It reconnects art to everyday life, materializing itself in the vision of a City that, at a time of great change, is capable of giving life to a unique model of urban civilization: a model which was expression of the knowing attitude of local administrators who acted in unison to promote the economic and social development of the territory. Infrastructures and services for the citizenry of high architectural quality and sophisticated construction execution are planned and realized. A new power station provides energy to be supplied to companies at cost, thus making them competitive and free to locate in the area. A tram network covers the entire city, serving all social classes. Excellent professionals in the Municipal Technical Office, with the collaboration of artists, design and build functional and beautiful architectures:
At the same time private clients commissioned palaces, apartment blocks, factories, cafés, shops, monuments, churches. The Art Nouveau language molds also barracksand hospitals. And it is exactly the variety of building types that makes Art Nouveau Turin unique on the international scene. A rich heritage of excellent executive quality, unique, authentic and intact. A total work of art, from the house to the city, where the concept of beauty becomes, in fact, tangible. A bridge, between the physical world and the spiritual world, that makes man better: “For in beauty is Goodness; in beauty is Charity; in beauty is Love” as the Piedmontese sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi states (“L’Arte Decorativa Moderna”, I, no. 5,May 1902, p. 1529).
Réseau Art Nouveau Network,
Bruxelles Urbanisme et Patrimoine
Mont des Arts 10-13, 1000 Bruxelles.
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