Esterno del Mar-Museo d'arte della Città di Ravenna.

Museums

Mar-Ravenna Art Museum

Where past, present and future dialogue in a timeless space

Complesso del Mar-Museo d'arte della città di Ravenna visto dall'alto.

Corridoio del Mar con installazioni musive.

In a fascinating setting – the 16th-century monastery of the canons of Santa Maria in Porto – we can admire a unique collection of modern and contemporary mosaics. Edoardo Tresoldi’s imaginative work Sacral has also been located in the inner cloister since 2021.

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History

It overlooks Via di Roma. Its aspect is unmistakable thanks to Mimmo Paladino’s Horse sculpture and Marco Bravura’s Roto-B, which decorate the entrance garden.
The building is the former monastery of the monks of Santa Maria in Porto and is also called the Loggetta Lombardesca, because of a splendid 16th-century loggia overlooking the Giardini Pubblici, executed by Lombard and Campionese sculptors.
Inside is housed the Pinacoteca Comunale in which valuable collections of ancient, modern and contemporary artworks are preserved and exhibited. On the ground floor you can admire the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Mosaics, permanently housed since May 2023.
The tour is divided into three sections. The first is the Exhibition of Modern Mosaics from 1959 – with paintings by Afro, Birolli, Cagli, Campigli, Capogrossi, Cassinari, Chagall, Corpora, Deluigi, Gentilini, Guttuso, Mathieu, Mirko, Moreni, Paulucci, Reggiani, Saetti, Sandqvist, Santomaso and Vedova and related mosaic translations, executed by the historic Gruppo Mosaicisti of the Ravenna Academy. The second is Mosaic and Design, from the 1980s, in which Studio Alchimia of Milan collaborated with the Gruppo Mosaicisti Ravenna. The third section consists in a journey into Contemporary Declinations of the mosaic art – the mosaic technique, sometimes traditional, sometimes distorted, is the medium of the mosaic artist’s soul and poetics. Important temporary exhibitions and reviews, including the Contemporary Mosaic Biennial, are also held at the Mar, and it is a venue for events, workshops, guided tours and lectures.

Must see mosaic in this place

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Le coq bleu by Marc Chagall

On June 7, 1959, the Exhibition of Modern Mosaics opened in Ravenna. Painted cartoons were requested from the greatest artists of the time, from which the Ravenna Mosaicists Group, led by Giuseppe Salietti, drew splendid mosaic works. Antonio Rocchi succeeded in translating Chagall’s design, rich in veiling and shading, into a mosaic with a dreamy, rarefied atmosphere. It is composed of countless blue glass and smalti-tesserae. Le coq bleu is a hymn to love: if we observe it carefully from the shape of the rooster a human figure emerges, holding out a bouquet of flowers.

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Mosaico le Coq Bleu dal cartone di Marc Chagall.

Omaggio a Odoacre (lit. Homage to Odoacre) by George Mathieu

The great George Mathieu, master of French Informal art, was invited to paint a cartoon for the 1959 exhibition. He accepted, but on the condition that he would execute the mosaic work himself, renouncing the drawing. Hosted by collector Roberto Pagnani (1914-1965) he made Omaggio a Odoacre. He wanted to imprint his painterly gesture, powerful, spontaneous and immediate, in the mosaic, a slow, reflective, material technique. He broke the patterns by throwing the tesserae onto the mortar and made the material lightning-fast with energy through the insertion of elongated scrap glass. Mosaicists Sergio Cicognani and Ines Morigi Berti then intervened, inserting sequences of tesserae to finish the striking work.

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Mosaico Omaggio ad Odoacre di George Mathieu.

Mobile Aulico (lit. Aulic Furniture )

In 1986-1988 the Ravenna Mosaicists Association collaborated with Studio Alchimia. Founded in 1976 by Adriana and Alessandro Guerriero, architects Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass Jr, Giorgio Gregori and others collaborators. Thus was born the Stanza Aulica (lit. Aulic Room), an interior room balanced between futuristic provocation and play. Poetry, art, architecture and craft production are united there. The Mobile Aulico (lit. Aulic Furniture), designed by Giorgio Gregori, is covered with mosaic executed by Luciana Notturni’s Officina del Mosaico. An imaginative solution to include art within domestic spaces: hiding the practical function of the furniture elevates it to an aesthetic object.

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Folla (lit. Crowd) by Luca Barberini (2009)

If you look at it from a distance, it looks like a lively, and eye-catching, abstract, multicolored composition. It is only when you get closer and carefully scroll through the surface of smalti and marble-tesserae that you realize you are looking at a crowd of people. A veritable catalog of human types, from punks to men in hats, from long-haired girls to bearded men. All in expressive and ironic attitudes, each one with a different mimicry and looking at a different point in space. Luca Barberini needed only five tesserae, made of marble or light-hued glass, to characterize each face and compose on concrete the variety of humankind.

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Info & tickets

Via di Roma, 13, 48121 Ravenna RA

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Entrance Fee

Adults: € 6
Concessions: € 5 / € 3
MAR CARD: €10 (Card which gives the right to unlimited entry to the permanent collections of the museum, from the ancient one with the new layout of the cells, to the contemporary section with the works of Zorio, Banksy and Cattelan, the collection of contemporary mosaics, the new acquisitions of the mosaic works, Sacral and the installation in the cloister of the museum by Edoardo Tresoldi)
The Mar Card is nominative and is valid for one year from the activation date and entitles you to a rate reduction for temporary exhibitions.
For more information on concessions: www.mar.ra.it

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Free of charge

Free admission for people with disabilities and caregivers, children up to 13 years of age, invalids, ICOM, teachers with school groups, journalists and tourist guides with ID cards, people over 80 years old, AIMC card holders.
Free entry for under 26 on Wednesdays.

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Ravenna, due persone ammirano un mosaico al Mar, Museo d'Arte della città di Ravenna.

Mosaic Places

Discover the other Museums of Ravenna

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