“Ver Sacrum and the graphics of the viennese Secession” arrives in Crema, featuring works from Klimt to Mucha.

From October 18th to January 11th, the Civic Museum of Crema and the Cremasco will offer a surprising journey through late 19th-century aesthetics with the exhibition "Ver Sacrum and the Graphics of the Viennese Secession." The exhibition unfolds through magazines, books, engravings, and objects from private and museum collections, providing a vision of an era in which art, graphics, and culture merged in a quest for authentic freedom of expression. The periodical Ver Sacrum, founded in Vienna in January 1898, was the true manifesto of the Viennese Secession, a movement of artistic renewal championed by Gustav Klimt, Max Kurzweil, and their courageous companions.

The magazine's name, Ver Sacrum, has its roots in an Italic ritual also assimilated into the cults of ancient Rome, where young men born in spring were banished from their villages to settle elsewhere. The meaning of this ancient ritual is imbued with symbolism in the Viennese Secession: a departure from traditional art to embrace the new, with the understanding that such a thrust is necessary for the rebirth of thought and art. Ver Sacrum thus became the vehicle for a revolution that swept Vienna and quickly spread throughout Europe, promoting the ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk, total art in which every discipline finds dignity and space.

The Crema exhibition brings the collection of the Ver Sacrum magazine to the forefront, with the most significant and iconic pages of its editorial production, from Giovanni Biancardi's Milanese collection. They are accompanied by illustrated books and exhibition catalogs from the Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Wiener Secession, the official group of Secessionist artists who blended tradition and avant-garde with rare coherence. The public will have the opportunity to admire original graphics and rare engravings created by members of the movement and by "corresponding" artists, testifying to the international reach of the phenomenon.

Crema will also host works by masters such as Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Alfred Roller, Josef Maria Auchentaller, Carl Moll, and Egon Schiele. Among the marvels on display is a lithograph by Mucha, "In the Latin Quarter," along with graphic works, illustrated books, and catalogs that celebrate the decorative style, stylistic play, and visual flair of the protagonists of the Viennese Secession. The variety of works on display demonstrates the Secession's ability to engage with other schools, from Symbolism to Divisionism, with influences that blur the boundaries between major and minor art.

The exhibition is curated by Giovanni Biancardi, Edoardo Fontana, and Silvia Scaravaggi and promoted by the Civic Museum of Crema and the Cremasco in collaboration with the Museum of Oriental Art - Mazzocchi Collection in Coccaglio.

In these pages, the magazine's typography transcends the English Aesthetic Movement, integrating page architecture, text, and images into a coherent and refined structure. The empty spaces, ascetic forms, and references to European folk art and Roman geometry create a visual universe that is both ancient and ultramodern. Ver Sacrum becomes a perfect aesthetic synthesis, where each master finds his own voice within an editorial project that aligns painting, graphic design, and design.

Going through the pages and observing the works on display, visitors clearly perceive the disruptive impact of the Vienna Secession: from the venue designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich, to the Central European artists who joined it, to the dialogue with international movements such as Belgian Symbolism, late English Pre-Raphaelite, Italian Divisionism, and Scottish Modernism. The legacy of Ver Sacrum transcends the late 19th century to the avant-garde and graphic seductions of the modern era, in a "flight to the future" that does not deny the past but reinterprets it in a contemporary key. A creative ferment that, in Crema, finally finds a comprehensive view, bearing witness to one of the most innovative and revolutionary periods in the history of European art.