Via Savioli, 2 Abano Terme 35031 Abano Terme
Museo della Maschera Amleto e Donato Sartori Villa Trevisan Savioli
Location: Abano Terme
It is a typical Venetian villa, whose layout dates back to the first half of the 17th century, but its current configuration was determined only in the 18th century. The architectural complex consists of all the parts that traditionally make up a Venetian house: the owner's residence, a small Italian garden, the former barn transformed back, the oratory situated between two buildings that support it, the courtyard, and the vast brolo complete the historical site.
The keystone of the main entrance portal is a mask that thematically marks the entrance to the Museum of the Mask. The body of the Villa thus constitutes the main core of the Museum, while the educational workshop, the administration, offices, and the projection room are located alongside.
The small Italian garden through which you access the Villa has been preserved and enhanced by redoing hedges and paths and completing the valuable enclosing wall; the original wrought iron gate has returned to its former glory. The large flowerbed to the right of the entrance houses the copy of the original bronze sculpture of Harlequin, the last work of Amleto Sartori (1915-62), which is instead located in the city center at the Kursaal gardens.
The Museum of the Mask is an integrated museum center aimed at promoting and enhancing culture, arts, and performance. A modern, dynamic museum of experimentation, unique in the world with materials to see and use, open to young people who want to learn the art of the mask, but also to scholars eager to engage on this topic.
Amleto Sartori, a sculptor and poet, dedicated the last years of his life to researching the origin of the mask in Italian art. He created the masks for the revived Commedia dell’Arte for productions curated by Giorgio Strehler, Gianfranco De Bosio, and Jacques Lecoq, for Jean Louis Barrault, and for the greatest of the Harlequins of this century.
After the passing of his father, Donato Sartori, in addition to continuing his path as a sculptor, maintains his relationship with the Piccolo Teatro in Italy by creating masks for Brecht's Galileo directed by Giorgio Strehler and for Ferruccio Soleri's Harlequin, while an intense collaboration develops with Dario Fo, Peter Oskarson, and more recently with Moni Ovadia. Meanwhile, the collaboration with major French theater directors and actors continues, and a new relationship begins with American and European avant-garde theater with not only theatrical productions but also multidisciplinary and multimedia ones.
In 1979, along with Paola Piizzi and Paolo Trombetta, he founded the Center for Masks and Gesture Structures and began an independent research project that, starting from sculpture, led him to explore beyond the mask, deepening the theme of the total mask and urban masking, managing to reach many capital cities in Europe and America, as well as Japan, Russia, China, and Australia.
Meanwhile, starting in the 1930s, Amleto first and then Donato created a collection that includes, in addition to the heritage of masks and sculptures created over nearly a century of artistic activity, also a prestigious collection born from meticulous research worldwide, which constitutes the remaining core of the museum's heritage.
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