The Galleria d'arte moderna Ricci Oddi (Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art) is an art museum, located on via San Siro #13 in

Piacenza Piacenza (; ; ) is a city and (municipality) in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Piacenza, eponymous province. As of 2022, Piacenza is the ninth largest city in the region by population, with more ...

, region of

Emilia-Romagna Emilia-Romagna (, , both , ; or ; ) is an Regions of Italy, administrative region of northern Italy, comprising the historical regions of Emilia (region), Emilia and Romagna. Its capital is Bologna. It has an area of , and a population of 4.4 m ...

, Italy. The museum displays a collection of Modern Art from the last two hundred years. The first works acquired by the wealthy aristocratic collector from Piacenza, Giuseppe Ricci Oddi, upon the recommendation of the sculptor Oreste Labò, were '' Pecore tosate'' by

Francesco Filippini Francesco Filippini (18 September 1853 – 6 March 1895) was an Italian painter from Lombardy. He was much influenced by Tranquillo Cremona. Life Filippini was born into a poor family on 18 September 1853 in Brescia, in Lombardy, which at th ...

and ''After Novara'' by

Gaetano Previati Gaetano Previati (31 August 185221 June 1920) was an Italian Symbolist painter in the Divisionist style and art theorist. Biography Study and early works Gaetano Previati was born into a moderately prosperous family and completed his first ...

History

The gallery was founded in its own building due to the patronage of the local jurist and collector, Giuseppe Ricci Oddi (1868–1936). The building was constructed in 1931 using designs by

Giulio Ulisse Arata Giulio Ulisse Arata (21 August 1881 – 15 September 1962) was an Italian architect. His work was part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1936 Summer Olympics. One of his most notable works is the Bologna Football Sta ...

on land adjacent to a deconsecrated convent, donated by the commune. The collections have expanded over the decades. The museum has today about 400 works of many local, mostly Italian, and some international painters. Among the artists of the 19th century in the collection are works by:

Francesco Hayez Francesco Hayez (; 10 February 1791 – 12 February 1882) was an Italian painter. He is considered one of the leading artists of Romanticism in mid-19th-century Milan, and is renowned for his grand historical paintings, political allegories, and ...

Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (28 July 1868 – 14 June 1907) was an Italian Divisionist painter. Pellizza was a pupil of Pio Sanquirico. He used a Divisionist technique in which a painting is created by juxtaposing small dots of paint accordi ...

Giovanni Segantini Giovanni Segantini (15 January 1858 – 28 September 1899) was an Italian painter known for his large pastoral landscapes of the Alps. He was one of the most famous artists in Europe in the late 19th century, and his paintings were collected by ...

Giuseppe Amisani Giuseppe Amisani (7 December 1881 – 8 September 1941) was an Italian portrait painter of the Belle Époque. Life Amisani was born on 7 December 1881 in Piazza Mercato (now Piazza Giuseppe Amisani) in the comune of Mede di Lomellina, near Pa ...

, Giovanni Carnovali,

Gerolamo Induno Gerolamo Induno (13 December 1825 – 18 December 1890) was an Italian painter and soldier, best known for his military scenes. His older brother, Domenico, was also a well-known artist and they often worked together. Biography He was born in Mi ...

Giovanni Fattori Giovanni Fattori (September 6, 1825August 30, 1908) was an Italian artist, one of the leaders of the group known as the Macchiaioli. He was initially a painter of historical themes and military subjects. In his middle years, inspired by the Bar ...

Silvestro Lega Silvestro Lega (8 December 1826 – 21 September 1895) was an Italian realist painter. He was one of the leading artists of the Macchiaioli and was also involved with the Mazzini movement. Biography He was born in Modigliana, near Forlì, to ...

Telemaco Signorini Telemaco Signorini (; August 18, 1835 – February 10, 1901) was an Italian artist who belonged to the group known as the Macchiaioli. Biography He was born in the Santa Croce quarter of Florence, and showed an early inclination toward the stu ...

Raffaello Sernesi Raffaello Sernesi (December 25, 1838 – August 9, 1866) was an Italian painter and medallist associated with the Macchiaioli group. He was born in Florence in modest circumstances. After an apprenticeship to a local engraver, he enrolled at t ...

Giuseppe Abbati Giuseppe Abbati (January 13, 1836February 21, 1868) was an Italian painter who belonged to the group known as the Macchiaioli. Biography Abbati was born in Naples. He received early training in painting from his father Vincenzo, who specialized ...

Cristiano Banti Cristiano Banti (4 January 1824 – 4 December 1904) was an Italian genre and landscape painter. He was a leading figure in the Macchiaioli movement of Tuscany. Biography Banti was born into a middle-class family in Santa Croce sull'Arno. A sch ...

Tranquillo Cremona Tranquillo Cremona (10 April 1837 – 10 June 1878) was an Italians, Italian painter. His paintings have a windswept style, lacking the linearity of Francesco Hayez and other academics. His technique recalls the ''pittura de tocco e di macchia'' ...

Daniele Ranzoni Daniele Ranzoni (1843 in Intra, Novara – 1889 in Intra, Novara) was an Italian painter of second half of the 19th century. A leading painter of the Milanese Scapigliatura, Ranzoni is also considered as the first of the Italian Divisionists. ...

Luigi Conconi Luigi Conconi (Milan, 1852–1917) was an Italian painter, who is considered part of the Scapigliatura movement. Biography Luigi Conconi graduated from the Milan Polytechnic in 1874 and started work as an architect, a career that he combined f ...

Angelo Morbelli Angelo Morbelli (18 July 1853, Alessandria – 7 November 1919, Milan) was an Italian painter of socially conscious Genre art, genre scenes. During his later years, he painted in the Divisionist style. Biography He was born to Giovanni Morbelli, ...

Antonio Fontanesi Antonio Fontanesi (23 February 1818 – 17 April 1882) was an Italian painter who lived in Meiji period Japan between 1876 and 1878. He introduced European oil painting techniques to Japan, and exerted a significant role in the development of mo ...

François-Auguste Ravier François-Auguste Ravier (4 May 1814 – 26 June 1895) was a French landscape painter. Biography He was born in Lyon. His parents encouraged him to prepare for a legal career, so he went to Paris. While studying law, from 1833 to 1839, he als ...

Antonio Mancini Antonio Mancini (14 November 1852 – 28 December 1930) was an Italian painter. Biography Mancini was born in Rome, Papal States, and showed precocious ability as an artist. At the age of twelve, he was admitted to the Institute of Fine Art ...

Domenico Morelli Domenico Morelli (4 August 182313 August 1901) was an Italians, Italian painter, who mainly produced historical and religious works. Morelli was immensely influential in the arts of the second half of the 19th century, both as director of the Ac ...

, the brothers

Palizzi Palizzi (; ''Spyrópoli'') is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Reggio Calabria in the Italian region Calabria, located about southwest of Catanzaro and about southeast of Reggio Calabria. The southernmost point in mainland Italy li ...

Francesco Paolo Michetti Francesco Paolo Michetti (October 2, 1851 – March 5, 1929) was an Italian painter known especially for his genre art, genre works. Biography He was born in Tocco da Casauria in the Province of Chieti. His father having died when he was a boy, M ...

, Stefano Bruzzi, Francesco Ghittoni, Luciano Ricchetti, Federico Zandomeneghi, and Giuseppe De Nittis. Among the artists of the 20th century in the gallery are works by: Francesco Bosso,

Umberto Boccioni Umberto Boccioni (; ; 19 October 1882 – 17 August 1916) was an influential Italian painter and sculptor. He helped shape the revolutionary aesthetic of the Futurism movement as one of its principal figures. Despite his short life, his approach ...

Giulio Aristide Sartorio Giulio Aristide Sartorio (11 February 1860 – 3 October 1932) was an Italian painter and film director from Rome. Biography Having attended the Rome Institute of Fine Arts, Sartorio presented a Symbolist work at the 1883 International Expositi ...

Plinio Nomellini Plinio Nomellini (6 August 1866, Livorno – 8 August 1943, Florence) was an Italian painter in the Divisionist style. Biography He was born to Coriolano Nomellini, a customs official, and his wife Cesira née Menocci.

, Mario De Maria,

Medardo Rosso Medardo Rosso (; 21 June 1858 – 31 March 1928) was an Italian sculptor. He is considered, like his contemporary and admirer Auguste Rodin, to have been an artist working in a post-Impressionist style. Biography and works Rosso was born in Tur ...

Giacomo Grosso Giacomo Grosso (23 May 1860 in Cambiano - 14 January 1938 in Turin) was an Italian painter. Biography After spending his childhood at Glaveno seminary, Giacomo Grosso enrolled at the Accademia Albertina in Turin in 1873, thanks to a scholarship ...

, Amedeo Bocchi,

Felice Carena Felice Carena (13 August 1879 – 10 June 1966) was an Art in Italy, Italian painter. Biography Born at Cumiana, he studied in Turin's Accademia Albertina, where he attended Symbolism (movement), symbolist poets such as Arturo Graf and Giova ...

Carlo Carrà Carlo Carrà (; February 11, 1881 – April 13, 1966) was an Italian painter and a leading figure of the Futurist movement that flourished in Italy during the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his many paintings, he wrote a number ...

Piero Marussig Pietro Marussig (16 May 1879 – 13 October 1937) was an Italian painter. Biography He was born in Trieste, Italy, and initially took lessons there from Eugenio Scomparini. He worked in Trieste from 1898 until 1918, and in Milan from 1919 un ...

Arturo Tosi Arturo Tosi (25 July 1871 – 3 January 1956) was an Italian painter known best for his Landscape, landscapes. Biography Tosi was born in Busto Arsizio, Italy. He moved to Milan in 1882 and attended the school of nude studies at the Brera Academ ...

Massimo Campigli Massimo Campigli (; born Max Ihlenfeld, 4 July 189531 May 1971) was an Italian painter and journalist. Biography He was born in Berlin, Germany, but spent most of his childhood in Florence, Italy. His family moved to Milan in 1909, and here he ...

Felice Casorati Felice Casorati (4 December 1883 – 1 March 1963) was an Italian painter, sculptor, and printmaker. The paintings for which he is most noted include figure compositions, portraits and still lifes, which are often distinguished by unusual ...

, Filippo De Pisis,

Francesco Messina Francesco Messina (15 December 1900 – 13 September 1995) was an Italian sculptor of the 20th century. Biography and career Francesco Messina was born at Linguaglossa in the Province of Catania in a very poor family. Growing up in Genoa, where h ...

Adolfo Wildt Adolfo Wildt (1 March 1868 – 12 March 1931) was an Italian sculptor. He is mostly known for his marble sculptures, which blend simplicity and sophistication, and paved the way for numerous modernist sculptors. Early life Wildt was born in Mil ...

Bruno Cassinari Bruno Cassinari (29 October 1912 – 26 March 1992) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked in a style that mixed cubism, cubist and expressionism, expressionist elements. Biography Cassinari was born in Piacenza, a city in Italy’s Emi ...

, and Achille Funi.

Theft and recovery of a Klimt painting

In 1997, the '' Portrait of a Lady'' by

Gustav Klimt Gustav Klimt (14 July 1862 – 6 February 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and a founding member of the Vienna Secession movement. His work helped define the Art Nouveau style in Europe. Klimt is known for his paintings, murals, sket ...

was stolen from this Gallery. The story is convoluted. After the theft, the frame was found in the roof of the gallery. Soon after the theft, on 1 April 1997, border police at the Italian/French frontier at

Ventimiglia Ventimiglia (; , ; ; ) is a resort town in the province of Imperia, Liguria, northern Italy. It is located west of Genoa, and from the French-Italian border, on the Gulf of Genoa, having a small harbour at the mouth of the Roia river, w ...

intercepted a package addressed to a former Italian prime minister. The package contained a high quality forgery of the painting. By 2016, the investigators in the case had spoken to someone who claimed to have replaced the original painting from the gallery with a forgery (likely the one intercepted at Ventimiglia). The art thief claimed to have stolen both the original and the forgery. The thief predicted the painting would soon be returned. In December 2019, a gardener clearing ivy from the building’s walls discovered a small trapdoor behind, and upon opening it, found the painting wrapped in a plastic bag. It is unlikely that the painting has remained there since its disappearance.

References

External links

Works in the Galleria d'arte moderna Ricci Oddi
{{authority control Art museums and galleries in Emilia-Romagna Modern art museums in Italy Art museums and galleries established in 1931 1931 establishments in Italy Buildings and structures in Piacenza