Art

September 2018 saw the publication of the eleventh volume in the series, a catalogue of an exhibition that was the culmination of a remarkable project. Indeed, two years earlier, Cornèr Bank had made a successful bid at an auction for “Vecchie Calzette”, a work by the divisionist painter Angelo Morbelli and the sixth in a cycle of his paintings that he christened “A poem of old age”. This inspired the idea of recovering the other five works and staging a second unveiling of the cycle (fully restored) in Venice, where - in its entirety - it had been exhibited in 1903. With the support of Venice’s Fondazione Musei Civici, the exhibition was staged at the Ca’ Pesaro Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna. This outstanding divisionist painter knew, better than others did how to give utterance to the suffering and solitude present in the hearts of the needy and in the silence of the empty rooms of alms-houses. Aided by the text and the images, the reader tunes into Morbelli’s sensitivity and can admire his marvellous painting technique.

A further publishing endeavour was completed in 2015, having originated from an idea of Paolo Cornaro. The volume about Antonio and Giuseppe Chiattone – two brothers who were both sculptors – gave effect to a wish to focus attention on the two artists and on art collectors from Ticino. It did so by tracing their full biography and presenting the first detailed account of the works they undertook or planned in Ticino Canton and internationally. This book, the tenth in the Cornèr Bank art publication series, benefited from the unstinting cooperation of Lugano’s Art Museum (MASI) and of SUPSI, which saw to the restoration of the plaster cast of Empress Elizabeth of Austria, previously on view in the courtyard of Lugano’s Palazzo Chiattone.

The sixtieth anniversary (2012) of the foundation of Corner Bank was commemorated through a monograph about Adolfo Feragutti Visconti, Ticino’s renowned painter, born in Pura in 1850. In addition to including a considerable number of works that belong in private collections, the monograph reproduces all of his pictures held in public collections in Switzerland, Italy, and elsewhere. This volume is the first to cover the entire output of this painter, who went on to further his artistic training and to feature in exhibitions in Italy, Argentina, and other countries. Moreover, during the course of the work numerous previously undiscovered documents came to light.