The cycle of dossier exhibitions at Ca’Pesaro, hosted in Room 10 on the museum’s first floor, continues with an exhibition focusing on the graphic work of Raffaele Boschini (Venice 1893 – Milan 1960) in an attempt to draw out the Venetian artist from the back stage to which he has hitherto been unjustly condemned. The 52 graphic works on show are a selection of the over 90 pieces donated to Ca’ Pesaro by the artist’s family in 1977, and which currently constitutes one of the largest collections in the museum’s Drawings and Prints Cabinet. These works only cover the artist’s youthful years, until 1922 – in other words, from the time of his occupation of the studio in Ca’ Pesaro until his first years in Milan – but these are probably the most interesting ones in his entire artistic career.

One of the first to enter the Bevilacqua La Masa studios, where he remained from 1910 to 1915, the year in which he moved to the more worldly Milan, Raffaele Boschini immediately formed a bond with artist Ugo Valeri, who tragically died at Ca’ Pesaro in 1911 but left a strong mark on Boschini. This is confirmed by the slender but decisive lines of some figures in which we sense the flavour of the 1920s that emerges strongly in his drawings and watercolours, leaving a nostalgia for something that goes beyond the gaze to reach the intimacy of the individual. This exhibition continues a process of study, promotion and rediscovery of artists associated with the history of Ca’ Pesaro and of the Opera Bevilacqua La Masa. The latter was the leading institution for the training of young artists in Venice at the time, and a fundamental centre for the production of art through whose doors passed the future protagonists of the artistic scene in the city and beyond.