Casa Masaccio is the oldest contemporary art facility in Tuscany and undoubtedly a unique experience in the landscape of Italian art. In fact, it is one of the rare cases in which reliable supporting documents confirm that an ancient building was truly the home of a Renaissance master (in this case, Tommaso Cassai, known as Masaccio).

In the 1930s, Professor Ugo Procacci from the Superintendence of Fine Arts of Florence produced the results of an extensive research confirming the origin of the building, which was acquired by the city council and inaugurated as a museum in 1978 after a careful refurbishment. The facility was initially designed to host the city’s painting collection, namely the modern and contemporary art heritage consisting of the works honoured with the Masaccio Painting Awards (1958-1968). However, this initial purpose was never implemented. The Masaccio Painting Awards was a competition launched in the late 1950s in the wake of the post-World War II cultural impetus. It was initially meant as a platform for the exposure of extemporaneous painting and later developed to embrace the sweeping investigations of national art trends. On the occasion of its last edition held in 1968, San Giovanni Valdarno hosted some young artists, at the time absolute beginners, who would later leave an indelible sign in the Italian art landscape.

The objective of the Awards, as set by the Chair of the Jury and Mayor of San Giovanni Valdarno, Leonetto Melani, and the members of the Jury (Giovanni Maria Accame, Alberto Boatto, Gillo Dorfles, Corrado Maltese, Guido Montana, Carlo Popovic, and Lea Vergine), was to grasp the most modern concepts underpinning art research in Italy, consistently with the revolutionary role played in painting by Masaccio in his times. The 37 artists selected by the Jury included Alighiero Boetti, Carlo Cioni, Ugo Nespolo, Giulio Paolini, Paolo Scheggio, and Gilberto Zo, who were invited to participate with one to three works in the main exhibit held in Palazzo D’Arnolfo, in the ad-hoc spaces created through an installation by Gianni Pettena.

And indeed, the experience of the 1968 Masaccio Painting Awards, which would be echoed at a broader level by the Venice Art Biennale held in the same year, led to the current vocation of Casa Masaccio centro per l’arte contemporanea [Casa Masaccio Centre for Contemporary Art]: a place dedicated to promoting new voices and new practices in contemporary art through an increasingly multifaceted and ambitious schedule of events since 1980.