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Cera Memoria – memories in wax.
Pages of history and time from
the Postumia Wax Museum

February 20, 2011 –  1° May, 2011
Opening hours: Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, holidays: 10-12 am / 3.00 - 6.00 pm
Free entrance

Inauguration: Saturday 19 February at 17.30 p.m.

Pressrelease

Many years ago, inside Milan’s Central Station, there was a wax museum. It was placed there so that all the people who found themselves passing through the station as passengers could visit it.
When the Central Station was restructured, the museum had to be moved. It belonged to a private citizen who then donated it to Associazione Postumia. The association restored the old statues to their former dignity and move them to the new Wax Museum in Gazoldo degli Ippoliti.
The museum itself, hosted in an ancient villa in the center, was the result of a long restoration and design work; it was inaugurated in 2004.
The relationship based on mutual trust and collaboration between Maccagno e Gazoldo degli Ippoliti has resulted in many interesting initiatives and this exhibit is a good example. This new and original idea’s purpose is to let people know and appreciate the statues from the wax museum in Gazoldo degli Ippoliti, but that’s not all. In fact, the underlying concept of this exhibition is to bring back to life and memory the Italian historical events, as well as their international context, from the last 150 years, since this country’s regions were united into one nation.
Twenty-eight statues have been chosen from the Wax Museum’s collection representing important historical figures. One of them – the first on display - is a sort of foreword to the exhibit: Napoleon Bonaparte. He is followed by the protagonists of the Resurgence: Garibaldi, Mazzini, Cavour, Vittorio Emanuele II and, close to them in an intellectual sense, Giuseppe Verdi, Alessandro Manzoni, Ippolito Nievo. We then meet Vittorio Emanuele III and Ivanoe Bonomi, who was the last president of the council before Mussolini, as well as the first president of the senate.
The next room is dedicated to the ten presidents of the Republic follows, displaying the statues of Luigi Einaudi, Giovanni Gronchi, Antonio Segni, Giuseppe Saragat, Giovanni Leone, Sandro Pertini, Francesco Cossiga, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Giorgio Napolitano.
Beside them, the recent popes: Giovanni XXIII, Paolo VI, Giovanni Paolo I, Giovanni Paolo II, Benedetto XVI.
Another room hosts some international event shapers of the past century: Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler; Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Stalin, who made the Yalta pact a reality; French president Charles De Gaulle and German registrar Konrad Adenauer, important figures of the financial recovery after the war; the protagonists of the crisis in Cuba Nikita Kruscev and John Fitzgerald Kennedy; communist emblems Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro.
Michail Gorbaciov closes the tour, bringing visitors back to our time.
 

The life-size statues conjure up history in their silent immobility, while large works – especially created by contemporary artists – serve as both backgrounds and visual comments. These abstract works – fourteen, each one connected to one of the subjects the exhibit deals with – generate a highly emotional atmosphere.
A painting by Giovanna Fra welcomes Napoleon Bonaparte. Giorgio Vicentini’s work is the background to Resurgence leaders, while the intellectual environment of Verdi, Manzoni and Nievo is interpreted by Grazia Ribaudo’s painted writings. Vittorio Emanuele II’s perspectives are concisely expressed by Antonio Marchetti Lamera, while Mario De Leo’s work symbolizes the epochal change brought about by Vittorio Emanuele III and Ivanoe Bonomi.
Paintings by Antonio Pedretti and Enzo Maio greet the ten Presidents of the Republic, while Pierantonio Verga’s painting’s sacredness envelopes the five popes.
The results of the Mussolini-Hitler pact are brought back to life by Raffaele Penna. Alessandro Savelli’s work accompanies the Yalta pact protagonists: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill. Paolo Schiavocampo interprets the dynamic European recovery stimulated by De Gaulle and Adenauer; the contraposition of superpowers represented by Kruscev and Kennedy is found in Max Marra’s pictorial tension. Intense suggestions by Grazia Gabbini and Franco Marrocco comment the last two scenes, the first dedicated to the heralds of communism Lenin, Mao and Castro, the second dedicated the end of an era and a door opening to the present symbolized by Gorbaciov.
An exhibit that is like a stage where collective conscience and memories are effectively brought to life. Italy’s history, world conflicts, daily life in the family, our very roots, all can be found in the sequences of pictures and statues and through them we can find feelings, passions, ideals again.
The exhibit was designed by Claudio Rizzi and Nanni Rossi, the exhaustive catalog is by PubliPaolini. The exhibit, which will be in Galleria di Palazzo Giardino (Sabbioneta) as of May 7 2011, is sponsored by Regione Lombardia, Provincia di Varese, Provincia di Mantova.
 

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