More than 400 works tell the original creative path of an inexhaustible experimenter, who went from painting to sculpture, from ready-mades to futuristic contaminations with graphic design, photography, visual poetry.
From September 18th to November 22nd lo Exhibition space of the Piacenza and Vigevano Foundation hosts in Piacenza a major retrospective dedicated to the genius of Osvaldo Barbieri (1895-1958), known in the art world with the acronym BOT, a synthesis of the pseudonym Barbieri Oswaldo Terribile which he himself chose once he approached futurism.
Conceived and organized by the Foundation of Piacenza and Vigevano with the patronage of the Municipality of Piacenza, curated by Elena Pontiggia, the exhibition counts on about 400 works arriving from important public collections (Galleria Ricci Oddi of Piacenza, MART of Rovereto, MIM of San Pietro in Cerro) and private, as well as from the collections of various local authorities in the Piacenza area. Not since 1980 has BOT's work been the subject of such a punctual survey, aimed at restoring the artist's role as a leading figure in the ambit of the second Futurism and subsequent experimentation.
“The BOT exhibition – underlines the President of the Massimo Toscani Foundation – is our first major project in the artistic field. A completely "our" project, from the design to the space that will host it, our exhibition hall. First, because this event will already be followed in 2016 by others: in the future, the role of the Foundation will increasingly translate into the ability to create culture and not just to support it".
The exhibition route gives an exhaustive account of the rich and eclectic production of BOTs, putting order within a disruptive creative energy, declined according to standards and languages in many cases so innovative as to be almost prophetic. As in the case of the bond, documented in the exhibition thanks to a large corpus of typographic and literary works, which starting from the declared fascination for Fortunato Depero and the passion for futurist poetry anticipates solutions of modern graphic design, proposing unprecedented connections between visual poetry , the calligram and actual advertising techniques. This is confirmed by the very choice of a signature, the acronym BOT, rendered in a graphic format similar to that of a commercial logo.
Crucial, in the experience of BOT, the meeting that took place in 1929 with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: throughout the Thirties the artist from Piacenza was the protagonist of the famous futurist exhibitions set up by the Galleria Pesaro in Milan (together with the various Fillia, Diulgheroff, Prampolini and a young Bruno Munari), coming to participate in two editions of the Venice Biennale, in 1930 and 1932. It is in the sign of a very personal vision of the futurist creed that BOT expresses some of its most innovative conceptions: from spheropainting to cartopainting, reaching ferroplastic, synthesis between painting and sculpture; pushing himself thanks to the collaboration with Gianni Croce to a use of photography and photomontage that leads him to extraordinarily innovative solutions for the time.
Among the fundamental themes dealt with by the Piacenza exhibition is that of the landscape, a leitmotif that runs through the entire production of BOT. Starting from the unsuspected paintings of a purely academic matrix proposed in Piacenza during his first solo exhibition in 1928, and arriving at the extraordinary aeropaintings which - following a path that ideally takes us from Balla to Tullio Crali - update the vision of the landscape itself from the from the point of view of the pilot, the motorist, the tram driver, the engine driver.
The exhibition deals for the first time in an organic way with the relationship between BOT and Africa, offering a rare nucleus of Italian "colonial art" of the Thirties. The protection of Italo Balbo leads the artist to a stay in Libya and to trips to Abyssinia which prove to be fundamental for the development of his poetics: the interest in the objet trouvé is enriched by elements deduced from local art, reaching the creation of works with totemic profiles; but also to the birth of Naham Ben Abilàdi, yet another pseudonym behind which BOT hides to sign paintings and poems that not without irony play with the clichés of orientalism and colonial art.
The exhibition set up at the Piacenza and Vigevano Foundation will be accompanied by tributes to BOT conceived and organized by ten art galleries in the city and in the area: Biffi Arte, Borgo delle Arti di Vigoleno, Galleria Il Lepre, Galleria Mazzoni, Placentia Arte, Spazi Art, Studio Baldini Art Gallery, Studio Jelmoni, MV Tirelli Antiquario.
In the opening weeks of the exhibition there is a calendar of meetings and side events that allow us to enter, thanks to the experience of BOT, in the heart of the futurist atmosphere.
Friday 25 September, 21.00 hours
BOT room of the Scotti da Vigoleno Town Hall
Carpaneto Piacentino (PC) | Piazza XX Settembre, 1
Presentation of Bot in Carpaneto, paint fascist Italy, film by Roberto Dassoni and Laura Bonfanti dedicated to the pictorial cycle created by BOT for the Town Hall of Carpaneto.
To follow: guided tour of the aeropaints
Wednesday 14 October, 18.00 pm
Auditorium of the Foundation of Piacenza and Vigevano
Piacenza | Via Sant'Eufemia, 13
What about Futurism? The crisis of the myth of progress
Meeting with Enrico Crispolti, art critic and historian; and Roberto Tagliaferri, theologian
Tuesday 27 October, 18.00
Auditorium of the Foundation of Piacenza and Vigevano
Piacenza | Via Sant'Eufemia, 13
Five senses futurist provocation. The kitchen according to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Meeting with Carmelo Calò Carducci, writer; and Michele Bia, barman
Friday 6 November, 18.00
Auditorium of the Foundation of Piacenza and Vigevano
Piacenza | Via Sant'Eufemia, 13
BOT in music
Futurist concert lesson with Daniele Lombardi, composer; and Ana Spasic, soprano
Osvaldo Barbieri (later Barbieri Oswaldo Terribile: BOT) was born in Piacenza on 17 July 1895.
Irregularly follows the courses of Francesco Ghittoni at the Gazzola Institute of Art in Piacenza. Then in Milan at the Humanitarian Society and then in Brera, always with the same discontinuous modality. At the outbreak of the First World War he volunteered. In 1920 he moved to Genoa, maintaining himself with the first jobs he found, from the painter to the longshoreman. In Liguria Bot tries to present itself to the public for the first time by joining group exhibitions. In 1926, during a momentary return to Piacenza, he falls in love with Enrica Pagani, takes her with him to Genoa and marries her, to then return permanently to her city to concentrate definitively on art.
In 1928 he set up an exhibition at the Amici dell'Arte in Piacenza, but his paintings are orthodox and canonical landscapes. In October of the same year he met the Second Futurism through the work of Depero, Fillia, Prampolini. In 1929 he met Filippo Tommaso Marinetti who blessed his work and supported him for a long time in some exhibitions in Milan and in publishing.
Important exhibitions begin: four times at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan on the occasion of the futurist exhibitions; at the Venice Biennale in 1930 and 1932; then in Paris, Munich, Athens; in '32 and '33 in Rome at the Bragaglia space. In 1929 he founded the Centrale del Futurismo in Piacenza, in 1930 the magazine "la Fionda", an example of a magazine built on the presence of commercial brands alternating with art reproductions.
In 1934 Italo Balbo, to whom he had dedicated a work, Aerotratti di SE Balbo, called him to Libya. In Africa his vision of art undergoes a further shock: the primitive atmosphere, rough and imbued with fantastic forms and magic, a vision of life very distant from the Western one, inspires completely unexpected works. He goes so far as to create an African alter ego, that Naham Ben Abiladi, with whom in 1935 he will paint and participate in exhibitions, hiding his true identity and passing him off as an artist known in Africa. In two moments, 1934 and 1937, he painted the hall and the staircase of the Town Hall of Carpaneto. In 1940 Bot returns to Italy with many difficulties and, due to the war, retires to the countryside where a new artist is born: he returns to landscapes, but ethereal landscapes, made of ruined houses, figures and still lifes that create atmospheres in a certain sense abstract. After the war he met Lucio Fontana in Albisola, he approached ceramics and even poetry. He organizes exhibitions and in 1951 participates in the VI Quadrennial of Rome.
He died in 1958 in poverty.
Piacenza | 18 September – 22 November 2015
BOT – Barbers Oswaldo Terrible
The futurisms of a juggler
Selected works 1924 – 1958
Edited by Elena Pontiggia
Foundation of Piacenza and Vigevano - Space Exhibitions
