Art doesn't stop. Not even in the summer. Indeed, the warm season offers a rich exhibition program that allows visitors to travel throughout Italy, from Merano to Sicily, and which will lead visitors to explore a creative panorama that from the Renaissance passes through modern art to contemporary art. and its different languages, from photography to installations, up to the fields of fashion and high quality jewellery.
The journey starts from South Tyrol, where Merano Arte, until 20 September, hosts a double solo exhibition dedicated to Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) and Birgit Jürgenssen (1949-2003), two of the most important exponents of contemporary art. Their works, as well as on an aesthetic and conceptual level, also happily dialogue in a historical sense, as they represent two of the highest examples of the "poetic-performative feminism" of the seventies.
By Francesca Woodman, 75 black and white photographs are exhibited, of which 20 are vintage specimens, never exhibited in Italy, accompanied by some rare color slides and a video, which will delve into the poetry and the metaphorical sphere that characterizes her singular language . Forty-four works by Birgit Jürgenssen, including black and white and color photographs, polaroids, rayograms, cyanotypes, drawings, sculptures (the famous 'shoe objects') and works made with fabric, provide a broad and experimental overview of her research.
From the 21 30 August instead the eighth edition of St. Moritz Art Masters: there are several places in the Engadine (clearly starting from St. Moritz) that host a program of themed exhibitions aimed at celebrating the art scene of a different nation of the world, as is customary. After China, Brazil and India, in 2015 it's the turn of another “emerging country”: Italy. A seemingly provocative but not casual choice, which identifies the characteristics of its possible redemption precisely in our extraordinary cultural heritage. Several events, hosted in public locations and private galleries, which focus in particular on the Sixties, with auspicious reference to the "golden age" represented by the period of the economic boom. Space then to the masters of the informal (Piero Manzoni e Lucio Fontana, but also Bonalumi, Scheggi and Castellani, with a project that evokes their "landing" in New York in 1966 and the consecration that took place with the 1968 Biennale), but also to the Cuban wilfredo lam, with a personal exhibition that tells of his long stay in Albissola in the 1970s, where he approached ceramics and developed a creative path that would take him to the 1972 and XNUMX Biennials. Finally, closing with the seductive fashion photographs of John Gastel, which open a window onto a Milan city of fashion capable, in periods closer to us, of underlining the birthright of the Italian Style in the field of fashion.
The itinerary moves to Lombardy; in Milan, the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana delivered to Leonardo da Vinci and his Atlantic Code the role of ambassadors at EXPO 2015. For the entire period of the Universal Exposition, until 31 October 2015, the exhibition Leonardo's mind. Drawings by Leonardo from the Codex Atlanticus, set up in the two spaces of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana and the Sacristy of Bramante in the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, allows you to make known the personality of Leonardo and the richness of the themes he touched on, the variety of his fields of interest and study, the particularity of his work and his genius in the context of the Italian Renaissance, through 88 sheets present in the same Codex Atlanticus, kept in the Ambrosiana.
A few kilometers from Milan, in Gallarate (VA), the MA*GA Museum pays homage to the genius of Ottavio and Rosita Missoni, right in the city they chose in 1953 as the location for their home and their first knitwear workshop. The exhibition, MISSONI, ART, COLOR, scheduled until 8 November, is characterized by installations that themselves become environmental works, and articulated according to different narrative registers that outline the main characteristics of the genius of the Missonis, made up of color, material and shape and which create a long journey among the protagonists of 100th-century abstract art , from Balla, Depero, Kandinsky, Klee to Fontana, Licini, Dorazio, Munari and many other artists represented with over XNUMX works.
In Piedmont, the charm and elegance of Gianmaria Buccellati's fine goldsmith and jewelery creations find their ideal location in the enchantment of Venaria, grandiose monumental complex on the outskirts of Torino, a masterpiece of European architecture and landscape declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco.
In the Halls of the Arts of the Savoy Palace, until November 29 2015, the exhibition The art of beauty. The jewels of Gianmaria Buccellati presents over 90 precious specimens, many of which are unpublished, which bear witness to how creativity, tradition and artisanal excellence have become the building blocks of Gianmaria Buccellati's success around the world.
Still in Piedmont, House of Rhodes, building of medieval origin in the heart of Domodossola offers an intimate journey through late XNUMXth-century portraiture, guided by the eyes and gazes of Carlo Fornara, one of the major interpreters of Italian art in the first half of the XNUMXth century. Until October 31, the exhibition Carlo Fornara and the Vigezzo portrait, presents 70 works, including paintings, drawings and sculptures, from the Poscio Collection and other private collections, able to explore the theme of late nineteenth-century Italian portraiture and the link between Carlo Fornara and the figurative tradition developed in the Vigezzo valley.
The exhibition itinerary also offers a comparison between the greatest exponents of this genre of painting, through works by authors such as Gaetano Previati, Tranquillo Cremona, Giovanni Segantini, Giovanni Boldini, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Emilio Longoni, Angelo Morbelli and others.
The journey through the Italy of art moves to Venezia, with the big project PLEXES IN VENICE, entirely dedicated to water, interpreted by Fabrizio Plessi (Reggio Emilia, 1940), one of the most internationally recognized and appreciated Italian masters
PLESSI IN VENICE consists of two distinct moments: the first is exposure PLEXES. LIQUID LIFE. The flow of memory. 1000 projects, scheduled until to 22 November at the Giorgio Franchetti Gallery at the Ca' d'Oro, a very suggestive building rich in history that overlooks on the Grand Canal in Venice. Here Plessi has thought of a video installation in which screens, inserted inside tables, send back images of an "electronic flow" of water, to ideally represent the flow of thoughts and of his entire creative life.
The other event offers the same dates at Tesa 94 at the Arsenale, a single large installation, entitled PLEXES. LIQUID LIGHT, which for the first time in forty years now bears no trace of monitors or plasma screens, but only a faint and mysterious blue light (reminiscent of the light of the television), which emerges from the keels of fourteen overturned boats, the llaut, traditional boats of the Balearic Islands for trawling and the sound of the waves of the sea.
On the Emilian bank of the Po, in Gualtieri (RE) the great anthology of Antonio Ligabue. Fifty years after his death, one of the most brilliant and original artists of the Italian twentieth century returns to the city that hosted him for over forty years. The splendid Sala dei Giganti of Palazzo Bentivoglio welcomes, until 8 November, 180 works, including paintings, drawings, engravings and terracotta sculptures by Ligabue.
The route winds through some of his greatest masterpieces, from Tiger with snake, gazelle and skeleton, Leopard attacking a swan, Royal tiger, from the XNUMXs and early XNUMXs, and then moved on to the impressive self-portrait gallery, from Self-Portrait with Piano and Tower of the late forties, to the mourners Self-Portrait with Biker Cap from 1954-55, Self Portrait of 1958 and toSelf-Portrait with a Jockey's Cap of November 1962, shortly before hemiparesis hit him and prevented him from continuing to paint. There is no shortage of other masterpieces, from bucolic and rural landscapes, in which castles and Swiss buildings known in childhood and adolescence stand out on the horizon line, to Carriages with postillion, to some versions of the Horses runaway by the storm and Cockfight, Crossing of Siberia e Eagle with fox of the late XNUMXs, a Boar hunting, To Black widow with bird and Tiger head of the mid-fifties.
The exhibition is the first initiative organized by the Antonio Ligabue Museum Foundation, created with the aim of establishing, managing and promoting the Antonio Ligabue Museum and enhancing the artist's work.
Descending into the heart of Emilia Romagna, the Civic Gallery of Modena welcomes, until 20 September 2015, the great retrospective dedicated to Art kane twenty years after his death and on the ninetieth anniversary of his birth, which presents for the first time in Italy a hundred classic and unpublished photographs that have contributed to shaping the visual imagination of the second half of the twentieth century. A part of the exhibition will be dedicated to the portraits and famous photos of the major icons of music of the XNUMXs, a section no less consistent with civil commitment (above all the struggle for the civil rights of African-Americans and Indians, religious fundamentalism, Vietnam, the nuclear nightmare of Hiroshima, consumerism, the growing degradation of the environment), to visionary existential reflections obtained from the "sandwich" of several slides (a pioneering technique in an age without Photoshop), to photographic illustrations of the texts of Dylan and the Beatles and fashion, without forgetting the evolution of American society, all fixed with such an original and visionary gaze as to win honors, awards and the covers of the most prestigious international magazines.
In Sicily, a land of great artistic traditions, is held at GAM of Palermo an unusual marriage between the painting of Marc William Zanghi, one of the most important representatives of the young Sicilian figuration, which fits into the path traced by the protagonists of the so-called "School of Palermo", and the architectural interventions of Gianni Pettena one of the most accredited exponents of radical architecture, which arose in Florence in the late XNUMXs. The project, entitled Images of a stay, proposes Until 7 September 2015, thirty paintings and sculptures by Marc William Zanghi placed in the spaces of the Palermo museum, specially modified by three interventions by Gianni Pettena.
And throughout the summer they continue:
In Lombardy:
until 8 August, Ec-cel-lèn-za. Milano, Giovanni Bonelli Gallery (via Porro Lambertenghi 6)
until September 15Silvia Calcagno. Interior 8 Le fleur Coupée. Milano, Officine Saffi (Via A. Saffi, 7).
until September 30Fabrizio Plessi. digital wall. Milano, Headquarters of Banca Generali Private Banking (piazza S. Alessandro 4)
until November 15Vincenzo Agnetti. Testimony. Milano, Studio Giangaleazzo Visconti (corso Monforte 23)
until September 20, 1946 – 1967 : The Lissone Prize. Lisbon (MB), Museum of Contemporary Art (viale Padania 6)
until September 20, The laws of attraction. Design & related: 1985-2015. Lisbon (MB), Museum of Contemporary Art (viale Padania 6)
Veneto:
until November 22, Beat Kurt. FaultLine/TimeLine. Venezia, Palazzo Bembo (Riva del Carbon 4793)
Emilia Romagna:
until the 31 October, Ninety artists for one flag. Reggio Emilia, AV Mediopadana station
Toscana:
until August 22, Giuseppe Bergomi. Clouds. Pietrasanta (LU), Giovanni Bonelli Gallery (piazzetta del Centauro)
until September 6John Gastel. The poetic irony of Giovanni Gastel, Bibbiena (AR), Former district prison (via delle Monache 2)
until September 15, Visual perceptions. Integration between real spaces and virtual spaces. Forte dei Marmi (LU), Galleria Spirale Milan (via Giosuè Carducci 45)
Trentino Alto Adige
until August 31, human figures. Merano Walk along the Passirio
Calabria:
until September 9, Chiara Dynys. Bread in the world. Catanzaro, MARCA – Catanzaro Museum of Arts (via Alessandro Turco 63)
