The Rassegna di Arti Figurative di Roma e del Lazio: the purchases by the City of Rome and the Capitoline cultural policy in the 1960s

Abstract

Despite numerous and continuous criticism for the overabundance of exhibited works and the lack of curatorial logic, six editions of the Rassegna di Arti Figurative di Roma e del Lazio were organised between 1958 and 1968 at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. There are many areas that should be investigated, such as the process of selecting artists and the reasons why some of them withdrew, the reconstruction of the various set-ups and, also, the conflicting coexistence of experimental spaces in the city and outdated institutional exhibitions. This article aims to analyze, for the time being, what the City of Rome purchased during the Rassegna: if, in its first years, the Capitoline collections were populated by works of art still firmly rooted in the concept of figuration, on the other hand the purchases for its latest editions seem to consider the intentions of curators Nello Ponente and Enrico Crispolti, who were sensitive to the most recent novelties in the Roman cultural context.