The twentieth century at GAM testifies to the great variety of approaches, methods and the desire for innovation that the “short century” encompasses in pictorial expressions. The exhibited works span the twentieth century up to the sixties, a long period in which the tragedy of the two world wars also took place. In Italy, for example, this span of time includes the twenty years of Fascism, with its contradictions between promotion and creative commissioning in the field of the arts and political control of society, the exciting moments of Reconstruction and the debate between realism and abstraction in the context of ‘art. The reading of works of art can then function as a vehicle through which to attempt an understanding of the complex evolutions, of the many moments that characterized the first half of the Italian twentieth century.