Pinacoteca Civica Levis Sismonda

Racconigi's civic picture gallery is built around two painters with roots in the town: Giuseppe Augusto Levis, the "painter of the tsar" who worked for Nicholas II, and Carlo Sismonda, a self-taught expressionist who was also a composer. Set in a historic building in the old centre, the museum pairs their retrospectives with a rolling programme of contemporary exhibitions.

Why it matters

Few towns of six thousand people can claim a civic collection with a story like Racconigi's. The gallery's name honours two artists joined to the town by birth or adoption. Giuseppe Augusto Levis (1873–1926), a pupil of Lorenzo Delleani at the Accademia Albertina in Turin, settled at the nearby Cayre estate, met Tsar Nicholas II and was invited to Russia in 1913 to work for the emperor — hence his nickname. Carlo Sismonda (1929–2011), born in Racconigi, won success in Germany with canvases of intense reds and violets while composing symphonies and film music on the side. The gallery keeps Levis's paintings from a city collection formed by testamentary bequest and shows about forty works by Sismonda, making it the natural complement to the royal castle for anyone wanting the town's own cultural voice.

What to notice

• Levis's works include Piedmontese landscapes, scenes from his First World War service, and Dutch, Russian and North African views.
• Sismonda's paintings include landscapes, portraits, still lifes and sacred subjects, often using saturated reds, pinks and violets, with influences from Van Gogh, the Fauves and German Expressionism.
• Sismonda's Beethoven symphony cycle of the 1980s and his 1990s tributes to the Hamburg painter Fritz Flebbe (1893–1929), whom he discovered in 1984, such as "Präludium" of 1992.
• The collection centres on works by the gallery's two namesakes.
• The rotating temporary shows of contemporary artists that keep the gallery in active use between the permanent rooms.

Context and history

At the meeting of Via Morosini and Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, a historic building in the old town houses the gallery. The Levis core derives from a civic collection formed through a testamentary bequest; works by the painter — a Chiomonte-born artist who had settled at the Cayre estate from 1901 and exhibited across northern Italy between 1903 and 1925, with a successful personal show at the Milan Permanente in 1909 — passed to the town after his death in Racconigi in 1926. Sismonda, a Resistance veteran alongside the CLN chaplain don Carlo Chiavazza, earned a composition diploma in Milan in 1955 and found his critical breakthrough in Germany, praised by critics associated with the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart and Bremen; he was made a Cavaliere of the Italian Republic for artistic merit and later drew the Bacchelli pension for distinguished artists. The gallery was promoted by the Municipality of Racconigi with the support of Regione Piemonte and Fondazione CRT, and it doubles as a venue for contemporary art exhibitions.