The Museo Internazione della Maschera Amleto e Donato Sartori (International Museum of the Amleto and Donato Sartori Mask) is located in Abano Terme, in the restored Villa Trevisan Savioli, one of the most significant holiday homes of the Venetian nobility in the Euganean area. The Villa, owned by the Municipality, has been given in concession to the Centro Maschere e Strutture Gestuali (Centre for Masks and Gestural Structures), and inside there is the Museum, unique of its kind in the world. Everything on display is part of the precious collection of theatrical masks from the artistic production of sculptors Amleto and Donato Sartori over more than eighty years of creative activity (the first work by Amleto Sartori dates back to 1928) as well as an extraordinary quantity of masks, original geo-ethno-anthropological finds and works from the most significant cultural areas of the planet, collected over years of study trips and cultural exchanges.With the desire to enhance, safeguard and make known the heritage of the mask, the works have been divided into three main areas.
Ethnology and Anthropology: with ritual, propitiatory, evocative masks and artefacts from Russia, Japan, China, Indonesia, New Guinea, India, Africa, North America, Latin America and Europe, accompanied by tribal objects, costumes, musical instruments, as well as masks, documents, objects and artefacts relating to theatre and ritual.
One section is dedicated to the Civil Mask: on display are masks worn in the theatre and made of various materials (wood, leather, metals and others), sculptures, theatrical costumes, accessories, plaster and terracotta casts, bronze casts, micro-castings, projects, preparatory drawings, exhibition and teaching materials documenting the graphic and pictorial work of the two sculptors. These masks tell the story of theatre from the Greek world to Ruzante, from the Commedia dell’Arte to the theatre of the 20th century up to the present day.
One floor of the museum is dedicated to Urban Masking and Gestural Structures: they represent the investigation, study and experimentation of a new type of mask linked to contemporary instances with a multidisciplinary character (visual arts, theatre, music, dance, gesture).
This research produces a sort of mask-sculpture called Gestural Structure or Total Mask that represents the human condition (from maternity to dictatorship, from the adolescent body to the counter-mask) and the design and production of performances and shows of vast dimensions called Urban Masking.
