Carlo Bilott Museum, Roma, Italy

The Museo Carlo Bilotti is a contemporary art museum of the city of Rome. Based in '"Orangery" of Villa Borghese and houses paintings, sculptures and watercolors of the collection donated by the entrepreneur and collector Carlo Bilotti Italian-American, which includes works by Giorgio De Chirico, paintings by Gino Severini, Andy Warhol and Larry Rivers and a sculpture Giacomo Manzu.

The de Chirico works on display are representative of the most famous themes produced by the artist from the second half of the Twenties until the Seventies. Themes such as the Archaeologists, the Horses on the River Bank, the Furniture in the Valley or the Room, the Knights or Ancient Warriors, all arose from a happy period of creativity and international recognition, following the years of the first Metaphysical period. In addition to the themes listed above, which appear in the museum in such masterly works as The Mysterious Archaeologists of 1926 and the Furniture in the Room of 1927, other particularly notable pictures on display include the delicate Back of a Naked Woman (about 1930), with which de Chirico, influenced by Renoir, returned to the genre of the female nude, Metaphysical Interior with Biscuits and Mystery and Melancholy of a Street. These last two are replicas, made by the artist in the Sixties, from his masterpieces of the first Metaphysical period. In his works from the Fifties, Self-portrait with the head of Minerva, in which de Chirico wears the dress of a Venetian painter, and Historic regatta in Venice, inspired by Canaletto, the artist declares the necessity of recovering the Italian pictorial tradition.

A building was already present in the area before the seventeenth century intervention by Cardinal Scipione Borghese. Manilli, in 1650, describes the Orange as a two-story tower building, covered loggings, a square courtyard painted in colorful and colorful paintings and figures, and a fountain in the middle of the courtyard. Later, besides the alteration of Cardinal Borghese, there were many modifications to the building. These changes have upset the palace, making it almost impossible to recognize its original appearance. At the end of the eighteenth century it was expanded and decorated for the will of Marcantonio IV Borghese, in conjunction with the arrangement of the contiguous "Garden of the Lake". The building was used for festivals and world events and was known as the "Water Game Casino" for fountains and nymphs in Baroque style.

Since 1776 various artists, including Cristoforo Unterperger and Giuseppe Cades freshened the interior walls, and several paintings were added. Subsequently, a citrus plantar was built.

Collections:
The most significant nucleus consists of 18 works by Giorgio De Chirico, one of which is the sculpture Hector and Andromeda, placed outside. Among the paintings are works with typical themes of the master in the period following the first metaphysical painting (those of "archaeologists", "horses at the seaside", "furniture in the valley" or "in the room" "Knights" or "ancient warriors").

The Carlo Bilotti Museum's permanent collection consists of the gift of 23 works donated by the entrepreneur Carlo Bilotti to the City of Rome, including paintings, drawings and sculptures. The most coherent and central group is made up of 18 works by Giorgio de Chirico (Volos 1888-Rome 1978), of which 17 are displayed in this room and one, a sculpture of Hector and Andromache, is installed outside the Museum. The collection also contains the portraits of Andy Warhol’s Tina and Lisa Bilotti, 1981 Larry Rivers’ Carlo with Dubuffet on the background, 1994, Mimmo Rotella’s Carlo and Tina Bilotti, 1968. Completing the original nucleus of the collection Summer, 1951, by Gino Severini and Cardinal, 1965, by Giacomo Manzu. In this first group have been added in recent years works Consagra, Dynys, Greenfield-Sanders and Pucci.

Other works are: the portraits of Tina and Lisa Bilotti, 1981, by Andy Warhol (Pittsburg 1928- New York 1987) and Carlo with Dubuffet in the background, 1994, by Larry Rivers (New York 1923-2002), the painting The Summer, 1951, by Gino Severini (Cortona 1883 - Paris 1966), and finally a large Cardinal in bronze by Giacomo Manzù (Bergamo 1908 - Roma 1991), displayed outside.

Severini’s neofuturistic work, Summer (1951), bears witness from another angle to the diverse threads of the Bilotti collection. The sorrowful woman, whose contours lose themselves in an almost abstract geometric structure, are part of a series of works dedicated to the theme of human activity as it is connected to the seasons, which the artist subsequently reworked for the Palace of Congress in EUR district in Rome.