 |
 |
Back to previous exhibits |
SALVATORE
FIUME.
Drawings 1935 – 1937
From
December 23, 2000 to May 01, 2001
Press release
Less than two months from the flood that damaged the
museum’s warehouse – not very seriously, fortunately -
Civico Museo Parisi Valle opens again on Saturday, December 23 to display
a new selection from the museum’s collection, and an exhibit that, while being
fairly small, will be a real surprise for all art lovers.
The works that are displayed in the permanent
section (i.e. those selected from the Parisi Valle donation, from which the
museum itself originated) are a good sample of the available works – over
2000, displayed using a rotation logic. Thus, the permanent section features
different works from those displayed in 1998 when the museum was inaugurated.
Among the many worthwhile works, we want to mention San
Sebastiano (1948/49) by Ettore Colla, a three-meter-tall sculpture in iron; La
montagna (1968) by Cèsar, made of polyurethane, Modulare doppio
(1973) by Nicola Carrino; and among the two-dimensional works Texture
modulare (1974) by Enrico Castellani, and Estruttura blu (1970) by
Estuardo Maldonado are worth mentioning as well.
The exhibit “Salvatore Fiume. Carte 1935-37” is
a collection of never-before-seen drawings (mainly by ink) and etchings that the
public can finally enjoy 65 years after their creation to discover the early and
totally unknown production of the Sicilian Master.
All these works are part of the museum’s
collection and were created while Fiume was attending the last year of Regio
istituto d’Arte del Libro, and during the first year for the artist in Milan;
that was a particularly difficult time for Fiume, filled with hunger and
sufferance. On one of the drawings in the exhibit the artist wrote, “ Only God
knows how much I’ve suffered here”; it is dated May 7, 1937 – Milan.
Fiume’s skill is very evident in these drawings:
his very clear visions are expressed by fast and free strokes, careful touches
that emphasize some of the details, and hectic, nervous lines, all working in
perfect harmony.
Accompanying the drawings are 20 etchings, part of
which never previously displayed, that bear witness to Fiume’s skill at using
this technique. The painstakingly drawn lines are enhanced by a very severe and
complex disposition of elements inside the make-believe three-dimensional space
of the work. Some of these etchings are particularly interesting: Giudizio
Universale, Dante e Virgilio, and – above all – the whole sequence (including
some works that were added later on) of illustrations made for “la secchia
rapita” by Alessandro Tassoni, a volume published in 1941 by Regio Istituto
d’Arte del Libro of Urbino.
This group of drawings and etchings documents
Fiume’s early artistic phase and shows how his never superficial graphic
skills were always used to service a type of art that goes well beyond mere
manual cleverness.
A catalog of the exhibit is available; it features words by Giuseppe Vittorio Parisi (who was one of Fiume’s friends and organized an exhibition of his drawings at Circolo Artistico Internazionale in 1937), a text by Salvatore Fiume about drawing, and some thoughts by Luigi Cavadini, who is the organizer of this exhibit and coordinator of the museum’s Comitato Tecnico Culturale.
 |
back to top |