An end, not a means

Un fine, non un mezzo (lit. An end, not a means) is a conference on Enrico Galassi (1907-1980) and the birth of contemporary mosaic.
The meeting, curated by Alberto Giorgio Cassani, lecturer in architecture at the Fine Arts Academy of Ravenna, will retrace the long link between Galassi and mosaic. It will focus, among other aspects, on two key moments: the Studio in Via Margutta 48 and the Villa Giulia Studio (Villa Poniatowsky), both in Rome.
Many believe that contemporary mosaic was officially born with the Exhibition of Modern Mosaics held in 1959 in the Refectory Hall of the National Museum of Ravenna. However, already in the late 1920s, a young artist from Ravenna, trained from his early years at the Mosaic School of the Fine Arts Academy of Ravenna, founded in 1924, had realised that, to be truly in tune with its time, mosaic had to emancipate itself from the Byzantine tradition and establish itself as “an art in itself and not a means”.