The Civic Museums of Bassano del Grappa is pleased to host Abscondita. Secrets revealed in the History of Art, an exhibition that looks behind the paintings and invites the visitor to change habits and read the history of art through the perception of signals, information present on the other side of the work of art.

This exhibition is curated by Chiara Casarin and concerns the back of canvases, frames, looms from the halls, and museum deposits. About one hundred pieces of fundamental historical-artistic interest including portraits, landscapes, still lifes, sacred and profane scenes will remain invisible because they are turned towards the wall and the back will document the history’s paintings, the artist, and the ancient owners.

Vik Muniz has copied the backs of famous paintings in every single detail also because some artists have preferred to exhibit what they had painted in the back. The selected works range from the late Middle Ages to the twentieth century: Da Ponte, Canova, Hayez, Sironi and let the visitor see the hidden side of the public collection that is always strictly hidden in the normal curatorial practice.