From January 16^th to April 2^nd  2017, the Galeria Kombëtare e Arteve (National Museum of Fine Arts) in Tirana will host an exhibition dedicated to Italian masterpieces of the 20^th  century, with over 100 works from the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome. These pieces represent an important tribute to 20^th-century Italian art.  Organized by Albanian public institutions, the exhibition is the result of the cooperation between both public institutions and private ones. hese include promoters, such as the Office of the Prime Minister of Albania, the Italian Embassy in Tirana, the Italian Institute of Culture of Tirana, the Albanian Ministry of Culture, the Municipality of Tirana, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Tirana, and  also the City of Rome, the Office for Cultural Promotion, the Superintendence of the City of Rome, as well as the fundamental contribution of the Fondazione Terzo Pilastro - Italy and the Mediterranean.

Curated by Arianna Angelelli, Maria Catalano, and Federica Pirani, the exhibition focuses on the artistic culture that finds its roots in Italy and Rome during the first half of the 20th century, among paintings, sculptures, watercolors, and drawings. Splendid female figures, portraits of famous individuals, still lifes, and views of Rome and its landscapes are the themes and subjects that contributed to the fame of great artists like Giacomo Balla (Ritratto di Nathan, 1910), Carlo Carrà (Partita di calcio, 1934), Giorgio de Chirico (Combattimento di gladiatori, 1933-1934), Filippo de Pisis (Natura morta - Pesci e bottiglia, 1925), Giuseppe Capogrossi (Giuochi, 1935), Renato Guttuso (Tetti di Roma, 1957-59), and Adolfo De Carolis (Donna con fiori - Nudo di donna con rose, 1910)The exhibition also includes works by Antonio Donghi, Afro, Duilio Cambellotti, Franco Gentilini, Felice Casorati, Enrico Coleman, Fortunato Depero, Vittorio Grassi, Achille Funi, Carlo Levi, Giacomo Manzù, Alberto Savinio, Tato, and Giulio Turcato, just to mention a few of the over 60 artists whose masterpieces are on display.

With its six sections, Late Naturalism and "Symbolism, “Roman Secession”, “Futurism and Aeropainting”, “Italian Tradition and Dialogue with Antiquity”, “Roman School”, and “Figuration and Abstraction”, the exhibition retraces the various artistic movements that developed throughout the 20^th  century. Visitors are led to begin the exhibition from the Symbolist meaning of landscape painting, dating between the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 21^st century –

with that strong desire for renewal and modernity that the artists of the Roman Secession experienced at the beginning of the century – to then arrive at Futuristic decompositions and the Aeropainters of the 1920s and 1930s. Starting from the tendency to revive antiquity, and the Italian tradition that marks several artistic movements of those years (from Magical Realism to Metaphysics and also Classicism in sculpture), the exhibition continues to delve into the Roman School, with a series of 20th-century Italian masterpieces, to finally merge into the Figuration and Abstraction section, which characterized the culture of the 1940s and 1950s.