The sixteenth-century Casa Cavazzini, in the centre of Udine, is home to the city’s museum of modern and contemporary art. It is a two-storey exhibition space, renovated by Gae Aulenti, which houses more than 4,000 works including paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings. The works are part of a series of collections donated to the Museum and are divided into permanent and rotating exhibitions. Among the works not to be missed are those of the Udinese brothers Afro, Mirko and Dino Basaldella and Italian and international works from the 1920s to the 1960s from the Astaldi collection: among them De Chirico, Carrà, Guttuso, Chagall and Picasso.
The FRIAM collection, donated to the museum by 110 American artists following the earthquake that devastated Friuli in 1976, includes exponents of the American art scene such as Andy Warhol and Lichtenstein. But the museum does not only preserve modern art: the restoration has given new light to a series of frescoes painted by the Basaldella brothers in the 1930s and has revealed a pre-existing archaeological heritage that includes a cistern dating back to 1500 and a collection of pottery dating back to the 9th century BC.
