Description
Giuseppe Pellizza from Volpedo and his artistic parable play a central role within the Art Gallery Il Divisionisimo - Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Tortona and closely interweave with those of another from Tortona, Angelo Barabino, both sharing the inseparable link with the territory in which their art matured.


The relationship of friendship and esteem with Paolo Barabino, nephew of the maestro Angelo, encouraged the Fondazione to ask for the availability, through the multi-annual free rent, of the house which the painter inhabited from 1915 until a few weeks before his death in Milan in November 1950.


The intent of the Fondazione has been to reproduce the original living spaces of the painter and his family, as the Barberino Family shaped over time and now, with an act of great goodwill, has decided to grant for public use.

The "Casa Barabino" project underlines the commitment of the Fondazione in giving a new light to an environment of everyday life through an attentive recovery and reorganisation of the spaces and care of the materials and works present in the home, activities which have led to significant end results, even if they cannot be attributed to a rigorous historical reconstruction of the studio.

The purpose is to transmit to the visitor the same feeling of amazement which some of us felt in opening the large shutters of the studio window with Paolo Barabino and in breathing the almost physical presence of a humble and sincere artist, but also of a man deeply marked by the horrors of two wars and by the difficulty in living a life consecrated to art at such a difficult time.

The opening of "Casa Barabino" to the public is also the opportunity to remember Angelo Barabino among the fifty one founders of the Cassa di Risparmio di Tortona, united in 1911 by the sharing of the programmatic fundamentals of the "Plebiscite of Concordia" and by the shared commitment to the "moral and civic elevation of the entire citizenry".

A civic commitment which was surely written into the genetic code of Angelo Barabino, elected town councillor in 1907, Councillor of Fine Arts of Tortona and Chairman of the steering committee of the Civic Theatre in 1909, Chairman of the Municipal School of String Music in 1910 and again in 1919, the year in which his expulsion was decreed from the Tortona branch of the socialist Party, with the accusation of "interventionism" for having set up a committee to provide assistance works to the poor families of those called up.