The “Osvaldo Licini” Contemporary Art Gallery of Ascoli Piceno is a hub for contemporary art located inside a Renaissance structure built for the Augustinian order, which also houses the prestigious Municipal Library. With the creation of the Polo Culturale di Sant’Agostino (St. Augustine Cultural Center) in 2000, the town of Ascoli Piceno finally created a space especially dedicated to the young people. The Gallery is home to the most important collection of works by painter Osvaldo Licini (1894 – 1958). After having lived in Paris -where he had the chance to meet Modigliani and Picasso– Licini decided to retire to his small native town, Monte Videon Corrado, a few kilometres north of Ascoli.

Osvaldo Licini was a figurative painter in the 1920s, abstractionist in the 1930s, surreal in the 1940s and in the 1950s: three faces of the same artist, the creator of the unforgettable icons of the “Amalassunte” and “Angeli Ribelli” (Rebel Angels), powerful figures with wings, tail and horns, a symbol of the eternal conflict between the good and the evil and a paradigm of the restlessness of the modern man.

Other paintings by Lucio Fontana, Filippo De Pisis and Giorgio Morandi complete the itinerary dedicated to twentieth-century painting, and culminates with the drawings that Tullio Pericoli created for the decoration of the Sala Garzanti in Milan. “Osvaldo Licini” Contemporary Art Gallery is a true hub of literary and local culture and one of the most interesting museums in Le Marche.

CONDIVIDI I TUOI SCATTI CON GLI HASHTAG: #visitascoli #ascolipiceno2024

AUTHOR: Prof. Stefano Papetti, art critic and historian