Exhibition reviews

The syllogism in artistic form: Armando Testa

For us, the 1960s were the classical and academic moment of the twentieth century that after the wartime débâcle repositioned Italy within the horizon of the modern by making it part of a mentality based on a "total" communicative strate...
Read more...

If the Catania superintendence organizes an exhibition. How it is "From the monasteries and convents."

When it is a superintendency that puts together an exhibition, there is a double guarantee that no other exhibition event will be able to give the visitor: the absolute certainty that the project has a solid scientific reason behind it and is not tic...
Read more...

A Villa of New Life for Castel Gandolfo. Correggio and Raphael in the papal palace

Excluded for centuries to the frequentation of citizens and people the summer retreat of the Roman Pontiffs, set as a gem on the shore of Lake Albano, knows from today a new and welcoming role of choral invitation as a gaudy seat with its furnished h...
Read more...

The book in art throughout the centuries. What the exhibition in Genoa looks like

How have books been represented in art from the Middle Ages to contemporary times? It is a vast topic, if one thinks of how many paintings and sculptures over all these centuries have depicted a book in the hands of a portrait subject or in a still l...
Read more...

A journey through four centuries of nostalgia. What the exhibition at Palazzo Ducale in Genoa looks like.

It is the fault of a young man who studied medicine in late 17th-century Switzerland that today we are accustomed to taking on, whether we like it or not, increasingly large doses of nostalgia. He was the first to pose the problem of codifying this f...
Read more...

Julien Creuzet's France Pavilion: a total artwork for thinking about a different world

It happens very rarely to enter an immersive environment and completely abandon oneself to one's surroundings. It happened to me at the Venice Biennale, after facing a long queue (as is now customary to visit certain pavilions), entering the Pavilion...
Read more...

Wael Shawky in Venice shows that you can be "Foreigners Everywhere" without hypocrisy

Foreigners Everywhere, Foreigners Everywhere, the theme identified by curator Adriano Pedrosa for the 60th edition of the Art Biennale, is extremely timely food for thought with respect to the contradictions of the globalized world, where goods circu...
Read more...

When Monet and colleagues invented Impressionism: what the major exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay looks like

A unique exhibition, the kind you will never see again, or at any rate it will be a long time before you see one of the same caliber: the occasion is truly special, the 150th anniversary of the birth of French Impressionism, and if the desire was to ...
Read more...

Instructions for making an exhibition of engravings lively. What the exhibition on Sculptors in Mantua looks like.

One episode alone would be enough to give an idea of the temperament of Giovanni Battista Scultori, an elusive artist who worked in Giulio Romano's Mantua, working among stuccoes, carvings, drawings, and engravings. It is a discussion Scultori had wi...
Read more...

The debut of Sassetta, elegant painter of the 15th century. What the Massa Marittima exhibition looks like

It is the Maremma's turn to launch Stefano di Giovanni known as Sassetta, an elegant protagonist of early 15th-century Sienese painting, into the crowded arena of ancient art exhibitions. Never before had a monographic exhibition been devoted to this...
Read more...

From train in the snow to water lilies. What the Monet exhibition in Padua looks like.

It sometimes happens that a selection of works from a famous international museum moves en bloc to create an exhibition in Italy with masterpieces from that museum venue alone, generally emphasizing the concept and the extraordinariness of the event ...
Read more...

When the Biennale exhibited masterpieces from glassworks. What the exhibition at the Glass Rooms looks like.

On the sidelines of the LX Venice Biennale, Le Stanze del Vetro dedicate a historical exhibition to the presence of Murano glass in the Giardini Pavilion between 1912 and 1930. The exhibition is a rare opportunity to admire extraordinary masterpieces...
Read more...

When a box set is a Wunderkammer wonder. What the Mirabilia Estensi exhibition in Ferrara looks like.

The record belongs to Julius von Schlosser, a distinguished pioneer of the Viennese school of art history: he was the first to take an interest, and to do so with a systematic measure, in the historiated caskets produced in the fifteenth century by t...
Read more...

Massimo Bartolini's Italian Pavilion: an invitation to listen that is difficult to hear

One senses a vaguely familiar atmosphere upon entering the Italian Pavilion through the back door and finding oneself immersed in the forest of innocent pipes with which Massimo Bartolini, who has been entrusted with our national participation in thi...
Read more...

Contemporary art that belongs to the community. The second edition of Connexxion in Savona.

Identity, memory and freedom. These are all topical and urgent issues, at the center of the public debate of recent days and also present as key words in the second edition of Connexxion, a diffuse festival of contemporary art, curated by Livia Savor...
Read more...

If the Venice Biennale becomes a photo safari among outsiders. The limits of Pedrosa's exhibition.

Exactly fifty years have passed since an "Initiative Committee for Naïve Painting at the Venice Biennale" wrote to Carlo Ripa di Meana, who had just been appointed president of the recently reformed Biennale, an impassioned letter asking the ins...
Read more...