Modern masters from the Guiliano Ceseri Collection

a lifelong collector

Born in Italy, the son of a tenant farmer, Giuliano Ceseri grew up on the estate of the Strozzi family, just outside Florence. There, he encountered great works of art at a young age, and his interest was sparked. He bought his first engraving at the age of 11, the beginning of a collection that now numbers thousands of works, mostly prints and drawings. In 1995, he placed about 1,500 of those works on long-term loan to the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia. Previous exhibitions of Ceseri’s collection focused more often on the Renaissance-era drawings that make up a large portion of the works he owns (and that can be seen in the museum’s Samuel H. Kress Gallery, where they rotate every semester). This exhibition consisted of drawings by 19th- and 20th-century artists, both American and European, including one of the earliest Ceseri bought, at the age of 14. Even as they differ, each work has an immediacy that sets it apart from paintings or prints by the same artists. Collectively, they offer an opportunity to study widely disparate approaches to making marks on paper.

Curator
Lynn Boland, Pierre Daura Curator of European Art