Naples is not just the Universiade. In the summer that bears witness to the relaunch of the city as a showcase for a major international event, the numerous and valuable cultural initiatives are no less - as always -. One of these features one of the symbols of Naples, Vesuvius: from 6 July to 29 September the exhibition can be visited in the splendid Baroque setting of the Certosa di San Martino (from which there is a fabulous view of the Gulf) Daily Vesuvius_Universal Vesuvius, edited by Anna Imposing, in collaboration, for the historical part, with Rita Pastorelli, organized by the Campania museum complex with Scabec (Campania Cultural Heritage Society) with the support of the Friends of Capodimonte Association and the Metamorphosis Association.
The exhibition brings together some of the suggestions aroused over time, from classical painting to Andy Warhol's modern pop reinterpretation, from the ancestral fear of the looming presence of Vesuvius over the landscape and the city, as an expression of the power of nature and human fragility. According to the curator “in the artistic imagination the perturbing beauty of the volcano is considered a tragic symbol of the catastrophe, mountain of fire which destroys, but which becomes vital and regenerating”. The review presents approx 100 works from the sixteenth century to today, including some of the most significant from the museum's collections alongside others from public and private collections.
It begins with the sixteenth-century Cartography of naturalistic interest, including the precious print by Athanasius Kircher, taken from Mundus supterraneus (Amsterdam, 1665), which presents the fanciful image of a Vesuvius in section.
The itinerary of the exhibition then continues with a section dedicated to some phases of the volcano's "career": the eruptions of 1631, 1754 and the others that followed one another in the eighteenth century, in 1872. Around the historical collections, with emblematic works such as The Eruption of Vesuvius in 1631 by Domenico Gargiulo (known as Micco Spadaro) recently acquired, and the theme of sacred protection, invoked for salvation with the eighteenth-century reliquary bust of Sant'Emidio, protector of earthquakes and cataclysms (Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro), with the depiction of Castel Sant'Elmo and the Certosa di San Martino, alongside some contemporary works.
The eruption of 1872 inspired a series of images of the Vesuvius landscape from life Joseph de Nittis, placed in a dedicated room, coming from the Giuseppe De Nittis civic art gallery in Barletta and from a private Neapolitan collection, among the most emotional pieces of the painter's youthful experience.
A selection of paintings between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is completed by the artistic testimonies of Carlo Bonavia, Pietro Fabris, Pierre Jacques Volaire, working at the time of the Grand Tour, documenting the "pyrotechnic" views of Vesuvius. Next to them are works by Tommaso Ruiz, Antonio Joli, and other artists who painted "in the shadow of the volcano".
In a separate room will be exhibited theAllegory of Prosperity and the Arts in the City of Naples by Paolo de Matteis, from the early eighteenth century, together with a series of gallantry and porcelain services from the Ferdinando factory characterized by the theme of Vesuvius in eruption.
For the first time, the precious series of around 100 will also be fully exhibited gouaches, watercolors and prints, consecrated to the image of Vesuvius, donated in 1956 by Aldo Caselli (patron and scholar and university professor), including three plates taken from the volume of William Hamilton, ambassador to Ferdinand IV: the Campi Phlegraei: observations on the volcanoes of the Two Sicilies, London 1776-1779. The volume, with plates by Pietro Fabris, coming from the Vittorio Emauele III National Library in Naples, will also be on display in the exhibition.
In dialogue with the ancient works, about 50 modern and contemporary works will be on display: the glazed terracottas of Leoncillo Leonardi, from the end of the Fifties, in which the artistic gesture imprinted on the clayey material acquires a rough informal plasticity; the burning of Alberto Burri All Black (1956) which refers to the fractures and burns of the earth; The portrait Vesuvius (1985) of Andy Warhol which portrays the volcano "bigger than myth, a terribly real thing"; The Without title (1996) of Jannis Kounellis in this the element of coal concretizes the naturalness of the poor material; the painting naval odes (1997) of Anselm Kiefer, contaminated by agglomerated lead and burns, epic depiction of human suffering.
In the entrance courtyard, the two sculptures by Bizhan Bassiri (2006) meteorites in the courtyard, installation completed by Red evaporationa (2013), a sort of solemn star that dominates the nave of the monumental Church. The sculptures of Anna Maria Maiolino, an Italian artist who works in Brazil, are bearers of an explosive energy capable of modifying the material of concrete and raku.
The exhibition continues with the works of Claudius Palmieri, whose ceramic shapes contain the lava flow that explodes instead on the paintings; the sculpture of Robert Sironi is part of the series Fire, composed of bronze casts of burnt tree trunks or branches found in nature; in the big cards Adele Lotito he uses the evanescence and transparency of smoke to measure and reveal presence and absence; in Inferno(2018) the Belgian artist Caragh Thuring draws inspiration from the ancients gouache Neapolitans, translating them into a pasty painting with thesilhouette on the top of Vesuvius, heirs of the poetics of the sublime. The paintings of Stephen DiStasio they reflect his style between symbols and metaphors, emerging from the world of the unconscious and oneiric; the tempera on canvas by the Neapolitan Oreste Zevola they take up the figures of saints and sirens, skulls and volcanoes floating in space, linked to the popular imagination, in archetypal and primitive forms; inTemporal geographies (2019) by Sophie Ko, a Georgian artist who works in Milan, the pigment mixes with the ash creating changing landscapes.
The exhibition is enriched by photos of Antonio Biasiucci, master of shots on active volcanoes in Italy and Vesuvius in particular, by John DeAngelis, that with V refers to the crater as a symbol of sudden changes, of Maurice Esposito, which documents the fires that devastated the Vesuvius National Park in 2017, and a "postcard" of Riccarda Rodinò di Miglione, a game of reflections in the waters of the Gulf and from the installation of art sound di Piero Mottola.
Along the way of the exhibition, in a small room, the short film by Maya Schweizer, “Insolite” (2019), created with the support of the Goethe Institute: a suggestive sequence of images of current Vesuvius in dialogue with those of the last eruption which took place in 1944, without any narrative connection, but imaginative and exciting.
“Together with the testimonies of eruptions of 1631, 1754 and 1872 – commented the curator Anna Imponente – contemporary works rather reinterpret a creative and regenerative anxiety which over time translates into irrepressible vitality. The exterminator Vesevo leopardian (The broom, 3 – 1836) can infuse art with an incomparable flow of new energy, as happens in nature for the fertility of the earth, both fueled by a cosmic force in balance between destruction and regeneration. The title is inspired by that of an exhibition by Stefano Di Stasio, Vesuvius daily (San Gemini, 2016) and from the title of the recent portrait told in the book by Maria Pace Ottieri Vesuvius universal. The two opposing terms offer the idea of the terrible nature of an impending nature and of a sociality that develops to exorcise its danger”.
