Back to previous exhibits

Metaphors of landscapes

July 30 - September 25, 2005
Thursday, Wednesdays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 10.00  to 12.00 and from 15.00 to 19.00.
Entrance fee: € 2.60,  cut-rate tickets € 1.60

The exhibit will open on Saturday, July 30,  at  18.00

Introduction by Claudio Rizzi

A Museum’s function  - which today is called “mission,” due to the changes our languages are constantly undergoing – is not to show off, but to display. This may sound obvious, but in fact there’s a profound difference between the two concepts: an exhibition must go beyond being a mere show; it must be education, communication, and documentation. It must be a prelude to the analysis of a given subject.
Big exhibits with big names supported by lots of hype are very often just generated by fads and people who simply want to be able to say, “I was there, too”. Unfortunately, this kind of enthusiasm for big names makes everybody forget about an in-depth analysis of the subject that should be the main purpose of an exhibit.
The reason behind this is that most people believe that thinking is bad and having fun is much better. This is not just an attitude towards art, but in every area of life… Superficial political choices, the choice of TV programs, the choice of films to see at the movies; these are just examples of this attitude. So much so that directors such as Fellini will be forever part of cinema’s history, but they never had the commercial success of silly blockbusters’ directors.
However, a not so small number of people want and try to understand. Their approach to modern art is embedded in an array of questions. The part of public that asks, “What does this represent?” needs and deserves answers and the necessary keys to interpret what they see. These keys can’t be found in costly settings where the wrapping is more important than the gift: they can only be found in logic reasoning that can turn into explanation as well as discussion.
The public’s questions mustn’t go unanswered. Answering is the museum’s duty. It can help its community grow, it can feed it what normally doesn’t come from school, and even less from critics, as they do not work for educational purposes but on a higher cultural level.

“What does this represent?” is a wrong question, but it’s not wrong to ask it. It is a wrong question in that it’s been a long time since it was compulsory to simply depict a detail of reality, but it is not wrong to ask it because not everybody knows this.
Landscapes are instrumental in this discussion. Considering that landscapes have always existed, long before man appeared on this planet, one may think that they’ve always been present in art, too. Well, that’s simply not the case. Landscapes appear in paintings, but always on the background, as reference, embellishment, and location.
For many centuries landscapes are not protagonists, with few exceptions. They become the main subject in some works in the 17^th century, but it’ll take one more century before they gain their own personality. Up until then, art only used to represent and celebrate divine power, but since the romantic period – during which the focus was directed towards man – landscapes and humanity’s habitat become autonomous subjects in paintings.

Artists from Europe and northern countries traveling to Italy were pioneers in this regard, but in Italian culture Canaletto was the first to create this kinds of works – even if he still only celebrated Venetian society and history in his paintings – followed by Guardi and Bellotto who started the great season of landscapes, which reaches well into the 20^th century with works by Tallone, Marussig, De Grada senior, Soffici and Carrà, Morandi, and the early works by Guidi. Further evolution came with Morlotti, Cassinari and Chighine, and on to the aerial landscapes by Roberto Crippa and the sea bottom paintings by Gianni Dova.
The 20^th century’s amazing sense of acceleration and progress generates continuity and further elaboration of artistic languages.
In life, languages evolve rapidly even within one generation and find new ways to synthesize concepts. Similarly, art formulates new means of expression through different instruments and materials, and extracts symbols from the context.
Artists become more and more independent and free from the celebrative obligations that characterized the previous centuries. Figurative subjects are no longer the center of attention, which now is shifted to the inner poetic and intellectual self that radiates spontaneously and unrestricted from inside the artists.
They choose the themes they want to develop, concepts that stem imperiously from feelings and reasoning, visions that reflect the artist as a man and his perspective on the world. As the artists gain more and more freedom, so do the observers who can tune their interpretation to the suggestions the works irradiate.

The best answer to the question seen above, “What does this represent?” should come from the very person who’s looking at the painting, as if it was up to him/her  - as opposed to the artist – to decide sense and content of the work that stimulated the question in the first place.
The great misunderstanding that stands as a wall between uneducated public and Contemporary Art is, in fact, the well-rooted concept underlying ancient art, where the mere reproduction of a real-life subject restricts – even prevents – any communication exchange between painting and observer.
The evolution of art is obviously just like that of customs, relationships, daily life… Evolution, not sudden and disruptive change. The artists whose works are displayed in this exhibit bear witness to the rich cultural tradition of our territory and continuously feel the urge to express their emotions and presence.

Their individual languages gradually depart from mere figurative art to reach evocative tones, and on to total image abstraction.
Sandro Negri lives and paints the sense of nature and roots, his art filters history, tradition and humanity even where only wind and colors blow. Armando Fettolini paints spaces of arid vitality, geography of desert and silent shapes, shades of calling, cries for help or accusations. Melo Consoli listens to the songs of nature, his works are poetry that tells about the passing of time, vibrations of moments and colors, almost tactile and throbbing perception of our existence. Powerful painting is the soul of Giuseppe Monguzzi’s art, a spontaneous and dashing description of existential territories, basin and breeding ground of emotions. Energy explodes in the nature painted by Edoardo Bassoli, almost perennial birth of noise, or catharsis of happiness described with lightnings of sudden, passionate light. Massimo Marchesotti, who frequently visits northern landscapes and culture, turns fast brush strokes and subtle lighting into expressionistic results of intense emotional impact.

	aa		---
Edoardo Bassoli		Elena Strada		Gianluigi Troletti

Elena Sreada’s structures of signs, spaces, and textures stem from the articulated mazes of biological tissues, a sophisticated perception of landscapes that become habitat and inner condition. Fernando Capisani’s combustions summarize an intense path of images, spaces and seasons that are almost a microcosm of history and humanity tied to their roots like a kernel is to the future. Brunivo Buttarelli, a solitary sculptor who gives new life and vigor to materials such as recovered wood, rusty metal, river stones.  Matter, earth, stone and soul of the world are also present in Oreste Ferrando’s art, who uses them as both instruments and subjects, giving them the poetic value of newly found truth and in the amazement of simplicity. Symbols of time define Mario De Leo’s landscapes and give light to technological constellations where signs and hieroglyphics of arcane writings still gravitate like witnesses of the past. Grazia Gabbini assembles and disassembles her textures, sometimes solid and sometimes made of perspective filaments, a fragile and fundamental fabric for another future. Finally, the works by Gianluigi Troletti mirror the world with their glares, their unexpected encounters, like destiny that turns into evanescent images.

Different themes and personalities with a common inner structure, a common truthful and mature poetic world, so much so that the observer can perceive convergent paths and suggestions. These artists’ languages – clear and rigorous - are far from being rhetorical and self-indulgent, or even commercial. They paint, separately or together, the geography of freedom and the horizon of spirit.

back to top