Civica Galleria d Arte Moderna in Palermo, Palermo, Italy | Art Gallery

In the new center of the monumental Complex of Sant Anna the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Modern Art known as Civica Galleria d Arte Moderna was inaugurated on 24 May 1910. The great National Exposure of the 1891-92 of Palermo, celebrating industrial development and the expansion urban planning of the city, had provoked desire to create a new Art Gallery dedicated to the contemporary art.

Opened in 1910 on Empedocle Restivo’s will, the Civica Galleria d Arte Moderna in Palermo, Italy was set up in the Politeama theatre lounge; the theatre was designed by architect Damiani Almeyda in 1874. Between two sumptuous Pompeian halls, a series of galleries housing paintings and sculptures by Sicilian artists from the XIX and early XX century. Most of the works of art were donated or purchased. This collection, composed of landscape, Naturalistic, Realist, Romantic, patriotic paintings, is representative of an age in which the city was economically and culturally alive, when it was dominated by the Florios, an age marked by the 1891/92 National Exhibition and by the presence of a large number of remarkable artists at Civica Galleria d Arte Moderna.