A privileged relationship is born between the Circolo dei Lettori and Intesa Sanpaolo which supports its relaunch. From this year, the Club directed by Laura Lepri will find hospitality in Casa Manzoni, a place of great symbolic value for the city of Milan and for Italian culture, which the Bank, after a significant conservation intervention, in 2015 returned to the use of the public and with which it has since then carried out important initiatives, in synergy with the Gallerie d'Italia in Piazza Scala, its museum headquarters in Milan.
The first result of the new collaboration is the cycle The stories of art, which opens today, Thursday March 1st at 18pm, Casa Manzoni, in via Morone 1, with a meeting entitled Medardo Rosso from Milan to Europe, a foreigner everywhere. The evening will focus on the figure of the great Milanese sculptor of the late nineteenth century, one of the most innovative of modern and contemporary art, starting with the essay by Sharon Hecker, A monument at the moment (Johan & Levi Editore). Solitary artist, nonconformist, experimenter of new techniques, Medardo Rosso was admired by the futurists and, later, by Henry Moore, Brancusi, Giacometti. He lived between Milan, Paris, Vienna, Berlin and London, cosmopolitan and foreign everywhere.
To retrace his human and artistic experience, in addition to the art historian Hecker, Philippe Davenport e Charles Bears, which will broaden the gaze on the Milan of the time, industrious and lively, anticipating the avant-garde twentieth century. They will also intervene John Bazoli, Honorary Chairman of Intesa Sanpaolo, eMichael Coppola, Director of Art, Culture and Historical Heritage.
After the meeting, a free guided tour the exhibition “The Last Caravaggio. Heirs and new masters” at the Galleries of Italy.
The Circolo dei Lettori – which since its inception in 2012 has presented over one hundred books with 6 visitors in 2017 alone – offers an innovative method of approaching books and their context, with carefully selected music and images, in a series of meetings aimed at different audiences. It will also be aBooks Time, the international publishing fair to be held at Fieramilanocity (8-12 March), of which Intesa Sanpaolo is a sponsor, promoting four meetings:
- Friday 8 March at 17 pm (Sala Amber 3) – Enemies/friends: Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, with Liliana Rampello and Franca Cavagnoli. Moderator Laura Lepri;
- Saturday 10 March at 11,30 (Sala Amber 3) – (not) illustrious readers of Manzoni: Giuseppe Pontiggia and Marco Messeri, with Marco Messeri and Daniela Marcheschi. Moderator Laura Lepri;
- Saturday 10 March at 11,30 (Hall 3) – The anti-reading club with Lodovica Cima;
- Sunday 11 March at 11,30 (Sala Bianca) – Enemies/friends: Lucrezia Borgia and Isabella d'Este, with Carla Maria Russo and Daniela Pizzagalli. Moderated by Laura Lepri.
“It will be “Le storie dell'arte” to inaugurate the renewed Circolo dei Lettori whose meetings arrive at Casa Manzoni, under the banner of novelty and continuity. We will continue to deal with literary geographies, readings of the classics, writers to be rediscovered, and history. But we will open to customs, anthropology and younger readers. Thanks to the collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo – and to the precious contribution of Professor Giovanni Bazoli – several children of early school age will grow up under the protective wing of the most famous of our writers” he comments Laura Lepri, director of the Readers' Club.
