Born in Ferrara but Roman by adoption, Giovanni Battista Crema worked tirelessly for over sixty years, interpreting all the modernity and contradictions of the twentieth century. After settling in Naples at the beginning of the century, he attended the Accademia delle Belle Arti as a pupil of Domenico Morelli. He is considered one of the most original interpreters of the pointillist technique, a language to which he remained firmly attached throughout his life. The works he created between 1935 and 1938 can be defined as the most representative of his artistic maturity, depicting his tormented and occasionally contradictory relationship with modernity.

As confirmed by the most dramatic passages of his memoirs, war was a theme on which Crema focused a great deal. A reflection on the themes of the fury of war contrasts with that of the dual value of ingenuity and progress, which the artist always considered a double-edged sword.

“We have seen the miracles of scientific technology that now compromise the very existence of the world, in the frantic search for the most spectacular means of destruction, and we have lost that sense of trust and security which made life bearable.”[1]

The work presented here with the didactic and representative title XX secolo, is a bitter allegory of a century devastated by the atrocity of war and the cruelty of mankind, and can be seen as a genuine “spiritual testament” of the artist. Gustavo Brigante Colonna defined it as a “Dramatic representation of our age which the artist saw tormented by wars, revolutions, furious struggles, unspeakable cruelty; and with them the end of goodness, brotherhood, and compassion.”