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COLORS ON THE WATER
EUROPEAN EXHIBITION IN MACCAGNO

Maccagno (VA) - Civico Museo Parisi Valle, via Leopoldo Giampaolo 1
July 13th - August 31th, 2003
Hours: every day except on Mondays, from 10.00 to 12.00 AM and from 4.00 to 8.00 PM
Tickets: 2.60 Euros  Cut-rate tickets: 1.60 Euros

Inauguration: Saturday, July 12 at 6.00 pm

Press release

Beautiful works by watercolor artists from Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Scandinavia
COLORS ON THE WATER: EUROPEAN EXHIBITION IN MACCAGNO
Parisi Valle Museum, from July 13 through August 31, 2003.

An exhibition entirely devoted to watercolors in the rooms of a museum that stands over the water, a bridge-like building on the Giona River where it flows into the Maggiore Lake - all this in the international year of the water.

As if the importance and talent of the about 90 watercolor artists from eight different European countries weren’t enough, there are plenty of other symbolic and cultural elements that make this exhibit (“Colori sull’acqua”) even more relevant. The exhibition will be open from Sunday, July 13 through Sunday August 31, 2003 at the Parisi Valle Museum in Maccagno, a little town in the province of Varese, on the Lombardic shore of the lake and near the Swiss border.

This exhibition stems mainly from the desire to let people get acquainted with the ancient - but still modern - technique called watercolors and, at the same time, demonstrate the various expressive potentialities of painting based on water and color spots. Watercolors have a huge capacity to bring to life both the most traditional figurative pictures and the most modern ones, to the point of complete abstractionism. To accomplish this the Parisi Valle Museum has contacted the Italian Association of Watercolor Artists; this alliance has allowed them to present to the public that in summer crowds the lake shores of the Verbano area - whether art lovers or just tourists - the works of some of the most important artists that have chosen this technique to set their talent free. Watercolors fascinate both those who can see the work while it is being created with a process apparently effortless and those who only see the finished work, but have the necessary knowledge to understand the process behind it.

This exhibit will display diverse currents and styles through the works of many artists that belong to different schools and traditions: from figurative currents to a more stylized and concise approach to the representation of reality, to an even more modern approach that only slightly hints to realistic elements and often leaves reality completely behind.
This exhibition is not limited to Italian artists, but it is actually a European event that will host artists from Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden; this will give the interesting chance to the public to compare various international artistic paths.
Another interesting “event inside the event” will happen on Saturday, July 19 at 9.30 pm: several artists from different nations (Italy, Belgium and northern Europe) will show their talent by creating a painting live, in just 30 minutes, in order to allow the public to see how a watercolor painting is created. This performance will be captured by a camera and projected on a large screen so that the audience will be able to follow each step of these masters’ work.

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