Introduzione

Two locations, a single project, a single catalogue. The two events La luce e il colore (Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Andito degli Angiolini, 16 April – 30 June 2024) and La forma e il simbolo (Venice, Ca’ Foscari Esposizioni, 17 April – 29 September 2024), promoted and supported by the Foundation for the Development of Art and Culture of Uzbekistan (ACDF), present for the first time in Europe the fascinating development of painting in Uzbekistan from the late 19th century until after the mid-1930s, when the dictates of Socialist Realism were imposed. In little more than twenty years, an extraordinary and fruitful interaction took place between the most advanced artistic trends of the European avant-garde, filtered through the Russian artistic and cultural milieu, with Islamic artistic culture, which had dominated Central Asia for centuries, and with the long Uzbek tradition of ornamentalism, which characterised the art, architecture and applied arts of this region. After the October Revolution, the People’s Commissariat for Education sent some fifty works by the historical avant-garde to Uzbekistan. From the late 1950s, Igor Savitsky collected in Nukus an enormous quantity of archaeological finds, handicrafts and folk art, works and graphic designs by Uzbek and Soviet artists, so creating the extraordinary collections of the museum that today bears his name. The result of this mingling is the remarkable collections of the Uzbek State Museums in Nukus and Tashkent, of which a careful selection is now being presented, exhibited and published for the first time in Europe. In the catalogue, edited by Giuseppe Barbieri and Silvia Burini, professors at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and directors of the Centre for Studies on Russian Art, a series of essays explores the historical and cultural context of this very fertile period, illustrating it with the 175 works on display.