Ugo Guidi and Mino Maccari: at the MUG2 Museum, from September 26 to October 25, 2026, paintings, drawings, and personal accounts illustrate the dialogue between two leading figures of 20th-century Italy.
In Versilia during the 1950s and 1960s, art took shape even outside the studios: in conversations among friends, in gatherings under the pine trees, and in portraits exchanged for fun and out of mutual respect.
It is from that world of relationships that “Maccari in His Own Way…” emerges—an exhibition dedicated to the relationship between Ugo Guidi and Mino Maccari, hosted by the MUG2 Museum in Massa, and curated by Massimo Bertozzi.
The exhibition is the fourth installment in the series I Maestri del Novecento. Following exhibitions dedicated to Guidi’s connections with Ardengo Soffici, Achille Funi, and Ottone Rosai, the museum returns to explore the network of encounters that enlivened Versilia’s cultural life.
Among the most eloquent examples of the relationship between Guidi and Maccari are the portraits the two artists exchanged. As Vittorio Guidi, director of the Ugo Guidi Museum in Forte dei Marmi, recalls, Guidi depicted Maccari in a 1955 charcoal drawing with an ironic and caricatural touch; Maccari responded with a pencil portrait featuring a more academic style.
The exhibition also features a small ink drawing created by Maccari in 1961 in the album of testimonials compiled by Vittorio Guidi—Director of the Ugo Guidi Museum in Forte dei Marmi:
“The relationship between Ugo Guidi and the artists who frequented his home dates back to the early 1950s, when painter, sculptor, architect, and poet friends would gather in the pine forest in front of his house.
One significant encounter was with Mino Maccari, during which they exchanged portraits of one another. Guidi’s is a charcoal drawing dated 1955, in which he renders the portrait with an ironic, caricatured style, while Maccari’s is a pencil drawing executed in a more academic style; the exhibition is rounded out by a small ink drawing—perfectly in keeping with the theme of portraits—that Maccari created in my album of artists’ testimonials in 1961.’
These works convey something that goes beyond the resemblance of faces. They reveal two ways of observing one another and allow us to gain insight into a friendship through the most personal language of its protagonists: drawing. Paintings and works on paper are accompanied by letters, which shed light on the human and intellectual context in which that dialogue unfolded.
Held in the spaces of the Bishop’s Palace, the exhibition thus invites visitors to view 20th-century art through the lens of its relationships. The Versilia that emerges from the works and documents was a place of work and encounter, where ideas circulated alongside people and left their mark on paper.
Info:
The Masters of the Twentieth Century: Ugo Guidi and Mino Maccari. Maccari in His Own Way…
MUG2 Museum, Palazzo Vescovile, Via Alberica 26, Massa
September 26–October 25, 2026
Opening: September 26, 5:00 p.m.
Hours: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Free admission
Information: direzione@museougoguidi2.it
MUG2 Director: Clara Mallegni
MUG2 President: Mario Locatelli
