User:Leacim11/Museo Ralli

The Ralli Museum Marbella is one of five Ralli museums around the world, and the only one in Europe. Located in the Spanish city of Marbella, it was opened in 2000 by its founders, Harry and Martine Recanati, and holds one of Europe’s most important collections of Latin-American art.

Housing a collection of contemporary Latin American and European art, it has ten exhibition rooms where visitors can enjoy its large collection of works. There is a particular emphasis on surrealist artists and works from both continents, revealing both founders’ taste and preference for this art movement.

The works on display, which offer a paradigm of contemporary art movements, have been chosen for their artistic quality, regardless of their value or the fame of the artist. The Museum’s main aim is for visitors to enjoy the works on display with absolute freedom and privacy.

The Ralli Museums
Ralli Museums are a private international non-profit organisation, dedicated to promoting the works of Latin American and European contemporary artists.

There are a total of five museums: the first museum was founded in Punta del Este (Uruguay) in 1988, the second in Santiago (Chile) in 1992, the third in Caesarea (Israel) in 1993, the fourth in Marbella (Spain) in 2000, and a fifth museum, also in Caesarea, in 2007.

Entry to all the museums is free, and visitors can walk around at their own pace, allowing them to enjoy the works in total privacy and make their own impressions without any outside influence.

Other Ralli Museums
The Ralli Museum in Punta del Este, founded in 1988, is located in the Beverly Hills residential area. The estate is surrounded by a beautiful tree-lined park, where architecture and nature blend to create a unique atmosphere. Uruguayan architects Marita Casciani and Manuel Quinteiro were responsible for designing and planning the facilities that were specifically built to host the Museum. The buildings include exhibition rooms and beautiful courtyards displaying bronze and marble sculptures that create magical spaces that appeal to all visitors.


 * Museo Ralli, Santiago (Chile)

The second Ralli Museum was opened in the city of Santiago in 1992. Located in the exclusive district of Vitacura, it is surrounded by beautiful gardens. This Museum has 16 exhibition halls that house an important collection of Latin American art unique in Chile, with artists from Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, Mexico, Honduras and Cuba, among others. It also exhibits an interesting collection of artists such as Dalí, Rodin, Chagall and Calder, who made a great impression with their prints and sculptures, as well as a classic collection consisting of paintings dating between the 15th and 18th centuries.


 * Museo Ralli I, Caesarea (Israel)

The first Ralli Museum in Caesarea was built in 1993 in a Spanish colonial style that perfectly fits the pastoral landscape of Caesarea. The Museum has five exhibition halls, as well as several octagonal courtyards with central fountains. The Museum was conceived taking into account Israel’s light and weather conditions. Natural light comes from large windows opening onto the inner courtyards. The upper level has a large square with sculptures overlooking the sea, offering views over the arches of the Roman aqueduct on the horizon.


 * Museo Ralli 2, Caesarea (Israel)

This second museum in Caesarea was built in 2007 in the Spanish Mudéjar architectural style. As in the Alhambra Palace in Granada, in the middle of the large central courtyard we find a fountain with 12 lions. According to historians, this motif originated in the palace of King David in Jerusalem. The fountain is surrounded by marble statues of Maimonides, Ibn Gabirol, Yehuda Halevi and Spinoza. The building has four floors, and exhibits paintings with biblical themes, created by European artists in the 16th to 18th centuries.

The history of the Ralli Museums and their founders
Harry and Martine Recanati, patrons and founders of the Ralli Museums, devoted much of their lives to promoting and supporting art and artists, both new and well-established.

Harry Recanati acquired his first artwork as a young man in 1952, beginning a collection of artworks by European artists from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Years later, together with his wife Martine, they continued to acquire artworks for their private collection. However, the theme of the collection was to change radically with the inclusion of works by contemporary artists.

This new facet of their private collection began with the work of European artists, as well as those from other continents who they knew thanks to their frequent work trips and tireless enthusiasm for art. Their frequent visits to Latin America led them to discover the local art, leaving them deeply impressed by its quality, temperance and colour. Their newly discovered passion for the art of this continent became the core of their collection, with a larger number of works by Latin American artists.

The culmination of a dream

In the 1980s, together they decided to dedicate themselves to what really made them happy and pursue their dream: to offer their art collection for free to everyone who wished to see it. To do this, they created five museums in different countries around the world, which they named the Ralli Museums, and the private collection was renamed the Ralli Collection. This name was inherited from one of the bank branches that Harry Recanati ran, Ralli Brothers Ltd.

In 2000 the non-profit Harry Recanati Foundation was founded to continue with the work that they had already started, with the main purpose being to promote and disseminate Latin American and European contemporary art with this Collection, making it available to everyone for free.

Martine Recanati passed away in 2005, and just six years later, Harry Recanati will do so at the age of 92.

The Ralli collection
The Ralli Museum collection is of particular interest due to the surrealist themes in many of its works. It includes major names from this movement in the New World, such as Roberto Matta, Wifredo Lam, Carlos Revilla, Luis Sifuentes, Rodolfo Opazo and Gerardo Chávez. In terms of European work, this same trend takes centre stage in the collection with the presence of artists like Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, André Masson and Joan Miró.

Alongside surrealism, the Ralli Museum collection includes other avant-garde movements such as cubism, abstract art, magical realism, new figuration or informalism, with representatives from both continents, and movements typical of Latin American art such as the Mexican School, the Spartacus Movement and La Escuela del Sur.

The Ralli collection in Marbella
The permanent exhibition at the Ralli Museum comprises the most outstanding works of contemporary Latin American painting. Argentine artists such as Alicia Carletti, Carlos Carmona, Jorge Ortigueira, Víctor Quiroga, Antonio Seguí, Julio Silva and Carlos Alonso are particularly prominent. They are complemented by artists from other countries, in particular Wilfredo Lam (Cuba), Carlos Mérida (Guatemala), Rufino Tamayo (Mexico), Francisco Toledo (Mexico) and Herman Braun-Vega (Peru), to name but a few.

The aim of the rooms that make up the permanent exhibition of the Ralli Museum Marbella is to present visitors with the wide variety of artistic creation that comes from such an expansive and multicultural continent. We are shown how some artists took on European avant-garde languages, even joining existing movements on this side of the world, or internalising and adapting them to create their own style. In other works we see how these movements are all rejected, with artists searching for and reaffirming their origins and their own languages.

In addition to Latin American art, the Ralli Museum exhibits works by European artists like Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall and Sonia Delaunay. This exhibition, distributed across three rooms, is interspersed with works by Latin American artists in which the influence of European art is particularly evident. Alongside this selection of pictorial and graphic work are sculptures by Mario Aguirre (Mexico), Víctor Quiroga (Argentina), Salvador Dalí and Eduardo Soriano (Spain) that fill the rooms and accompany the visitor on their journey through art.