Galleria d'arte moderna Ricci Oddi, Modern art museum in Piacenza, Italy
Galleria d'arte moderna Ricci Oddi is an art museum on via San Siro 13 in Piacenza, built in 1931 to designs by Giulio Ulisse Arata next to a deconsecrated convent. It holds about 400 paintings, mainly Italian landscapes and portraits from the 19th and early 20th centuries, including works by Francesco Hayez, Giovanni Fattori and Gustav Klimt.
Giuseppe Ricci Oddi began collecting in 1897 and from 1913 sought a building for his paintings, rejecting existing palazzi for poor lighting. He funded a new gallery designed by Giulio Ulisse Arata on land by the former San Sisto convent, donated to the city on 27 December 1924. It opened on 11 October 1931 with about 450 works; Ricci Oddi died in 1937, leaving his estate to the gallery.
The gallery takes its name from Giuseppe Ricci Oddi, a wealthy collector from Piacenza who wanted to share his passion for art with the public. Visitors encounter Italian painters like Francesco Hayez and Carlo Carrà alongside international names such as Gustav Klimt.
The gallery stands at via San Siro 13, beside the former convent of San Sisto whose surviving parts were joined to Arata's new building. The entrance is on street level in the historic centre, within walking distance of Piazza Cavalli. The original layout, arranged by Ricci Oddi with Arata and Aldo Carpi, held just over 450 works.
The 1997 theft of Klimt's Portrait of a Lady left only the empty frame on the gallery roof. In 1997 border police at Ventimiglia also intercepted a forgery of the painting addressed to a former Italian prime minister. In December 2019 a gardener clearing ivy found the original wrapped in a plastic bag behind a small trapdoor in the wall.
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