CASA-STUDIO DI FERNANDO MELANI

The historic house museum and studio of Fernando Melani (1907–1985) holds a singular place in the Civic Museum organization, being acquired by the Municipality in 1987 and inaugurated in 1996 after a careful restoration that respected its complexity. Here is a collection of 2,800 works —  “experiences”, as the artist would call them — in a continuum between domestic and creative spaces, a microcosm permeated with poetry testifying to a journey of research that took place strictly between the domestic walls, from after the war till his death. Melani began to paint in the  twentieth-century landscape genre, then shifted towards Arte Povera, Conceptual Art and Minimal Art.

The visit wending round subsided heaps of material follows a richly suggestive itinerary: the works occupy the ceilings, the walls, and the floors; they spill out onto the landings, and are even stretched out like laundry in the library.