An exhibition to cross cultural boundaries, recognize ancient languages and approach a different understanding of art and spirituality. Entitled Africa Forms of Art, the ethno-art exhibition that the Pinerolo Center for Folk Arts and Traditions presents from Sept. 5 to 21, 2025, at the Pinerolo (Turin) Pinerolo Territory Interpretation Center, in collaboration with the Vittone Consortium. The exhibition curated by Ettore Brezzo, is presented as a visual and symbolic journey that brings together a selection of masks, sculptures and fetishes from the African continent, all belonging to the private collection of Ettore and Lina Brezzo.
The exhibition is part of the second chapter of a cultural project that began in 2013, when an exhibition dedicated totraditional African art was first proposed in Pinerolo. Today’s edition continues and deepens that journey, keeping intact the goal of offering the public a close look at the complexity and expressive intensity of African civilizations, through objects of great anthropological and symbolic value.
“Africa is a continent three times the size of Europe with more than 3,000 ethnic groups with masks and statues of different workmanship,” argues Ettore Brezzo. “It is therefore impossible to bring in an exhibition all the artistic production of the African continent, but the selection of works present is important and certainly useful to those who want to delve into the complex subject of African art. The objects, statues and masks are not created for purely aesthetic purposes; one must understand their roles and meanings. Very rarely are they used for decorative purposes as in court art. They normally have religious, social and magical functions involving multiple people in the creation process: the commissioner, the sculptor and the minister of worship. Many reasons have created this type of collecting: for some it is a point of reference for the art movements of the early twentieth century, most notably cubism and abstractionism, which gave artists the opportunity to break free from the canons of traditional painting. For others, it is a way to admire outside their environment these sculptures, luminous fragments of the magical-religious framework in which they were born. Ceremonial objects related to initiation rites, worship of the dead and village life, from birth to weddings and funerals, have been displayed. Beautiful objects, as far as the Western aesthetic canon is concerned, and more complex objects such as fetishes, sometimes grotesque by virtue of the meaning they want and need to convey; fetishes, in fact, are the representation of offensive and defensive magical forces: they repel diseases, demons, protect villages, travelers, the moment of birth, hunting and war. Where the supernatural reigns and man fails to intervene, the fetish dominates unchallenged.”
“The collection was born from the countless trips to Africa undertaken with my wife Lina since the 1980s,” Brezzo continues. “It was born slowly and continues and has taken an important part of our lives in the many pieces collected on trips, in villages, from antique dealers and collectors, each with a story, with feelings and memories conveyed by the sinuous lines of a statue or the solemn gaze of a mask. The collection that was initially born as a pure travel souvenir has transformed over the years into research and in-depth study of the traditions, magic, rituals and culture of distant populations but at the same time similar to our customs. In the exhibition the visitor is drawn into a whirlwind of sometimes complex figures of a little-known and little-understood reality, where statuary and masks were and still are part of their sometimes magical everyday life. It is a tribute to Africa and its ethnic groups, to magic and the sacred, to the welcome and the impenetrable but full of fascination art of a feared and still mysterious continent.”
The centerpiece of the initiative is the Brezzo collection, the result of a long passion cultivated by Ettore and Lina. Over the years, the two have collected artifacts from different areas of the African continent, developing a firsthand knowledge of the cultural and religious contexts from which those works come. Ritual masks, sculptural figures and votive objects compose an articulated mosaic of styles and meanings, material expressions of beliefs and worldviews that have been transmitted orally and artistically from generation to generation.
The exhibition is thus an opportunity to approach a heritage that is often relegated to the margins of Western artistic narratives, but which possesses its own aesthetic and conceptual power. The selection of objects is accompanied by a narrative structure that allows each artifact to be contextualized, thanks in part to the narrative of Ettore Brezzo, who over the years has personally delved into many of the ethnic and spiritual realms to which the works refer.
Africa art forms is not just a documentary exhibition, however. The entire project also takes on a commemorative value, addressing the figure of Ezio Giaj, who in 2013 was the promoter and organizer of the first stage of the initiative. A passionate cultural divulger and profound connoisseur of popular traditions, Giaj had devoted his work with conviction to the valorization of other cultures, helping to root in the Pinerolo area a sensibility open to encounter and dialogue. The current exhibition is also meant to be a heartfelt and still living tribute to his memory, by the Center for Folk Arts and Traditions and those who shared that path, with the support of the City of Pinerolo and the Vittone Consortium.
As a whole, the initiative is part of the cultural promotion project aimed at broadening the horizon of knowledge and restoring dignity and value to artistic forms often considered minor or exotic. Far from taking on celebratory tones, the exhibition invites a conscious and respectful gaze, capable of recognizing in the plurality of artistic expressions a richness that crosses continents and eras.
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| Africa art forms: masks, sculptures and fetishes from the Brezzo collection on display in Pinerolo |
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