In the city of Pius II, born from a dream of love and from an idea of beauty, the project "Young Artists and the Classical" makes its debut, to which Roggero Roggeri gave life together with Sara Mammana, and which will see, every year, the staging of two exhibitions dedicated to the best students of Italian and foreign academies. With the aim of enhancing, in today's times, an artistic form, that of the figurative genre, often and unjustly little considered in the world of contemporary art exhibitions, because, in the opinion of many experts in the sector, no longer responding to the feeling of modern day man.
the debut, from 16 September to 8 October, it will feature 16 artists, carefully selected from the Florence Academy of Art in Florence, an institution of great international prestige, founded over 25 years ago, a precious custodian of the ancient technical-artistic knowledge that has made Italian art great over the centuries.
The 16 artistic personalities chosen for the Pienza exhibition are painters and sculptors, particularly versed in the figurative arts, from 12 countries around the world, from India to Korea, from the United States to Australia, as well as from various European nations. A scientific committee selected them. All made possible by the patronage guaranteed by the "Biagiotti per l'Arte" Cultural Association which, for the occasion, also edited an in-depth scientific catalogue. The Municipality of Pienza and UNESCO sponsor the project.
A choice against the tide and with a vaguely provocative taste, therefore, the one carried out by the cultural association of Pienza and by the curators, which aims to underline how formal beauty based on the harmonic and eurythmic canons of ancient classical aesthetics is still capable, going beyond the fashions, to arouse interest and attract the deep feeling of modern man, increasingly in need, in a context of strong political-cultural identity crisis, to approach that peace and balance that only authentic beauty can instill.
"After all, in the context of the only true Ideal City of the Renaissance: Pienza, this event becomes - underlines Roggero Roggeri - a tribute to the precious teaching and to the great cultural heritage that the humanist pope Pius II wanted, indelibly, to imprint on the hometown which, thanks to a unique and unrepeatable project, has taken on the guise of an aesthetically perfect urban complex, in which the mathematical laws of harmony still act today as the common denominator for the emanation of an ever-powerful and still current beauty .
In a world where war and violence wreak havoc on the international artistic heritage, where the protection of art and the historical roots of every people has become a moral duty to safeguard the most beautiful and edifying things mankind has generated in the course of history, Pienza as a Unesco site becomes the bearer of a message of hope: despite the changes and dizzying transformations of the complex modern society, there is still a part of contemporary art which through the recovery of the ancient knowledge of the masters of the past, is still able to transmit and nourish the Beauty which, by itself, by elevating souls, is truly capable of saving the world".
THE SHAPE OF BEAUTY – The Florence Academy of Art
Duration: 16 September – 8 October 2017
Location: Palazzo Salomone Piccolomini, corso Rossellino, 41, Pienza
Cover image: Elmo Niklas, Ruby, 130×100. 2016
