Aldo Mondino's extraordinary travels on display in Forte dei Marmi

From August 7 to September 26, 2020, Villa Bertelli in Forte dei Marmi will host the exhibition Extraordinary Journeys of Aldo Mondino (Turin, 1938 - 2005), curated by Valerio Dehò. The retrospective is promoted by Villa Bertelli under the patronage of the Municipality of Forte dei Marmi, in collaboration with the Aldo Mondino Archive.

A central theme in the artist’s work is travel, both in a physical and metaphorical sense: hence the title of the exhibition. Extraordinary journeys that arise out of a desire to discover and learn about different cultures and worlds, but also to overlook the many languages of art.

Since the early 1960s, Mondino has been confronted with many artistic languages, from encyclopedias and herbaria to Felice Casorati, whom the artist has paid homage to by taking up the famous Maternity. He has also revisitedabstract art, Jim Dine’s Pop painting, Central European woodcuts, Alberto Giacometti and Umberto Boccioni, puzzles, Kings, street code and many other languages. His curiosity and flair for irony, wordplay, and parody drove him to continually seek new comparisons.

In his travels Mondino has gone as far as Africa, the Mediterranean basin, and India; in 2000 he exhibited some large-scale works in Calcutta. However, as well as physical, his travels have also been literary, that is, occasions born out of books or authors he has always loved, such as Paul Bowles and Blaise Cendrars. He has been many times to Essaouira, Morocco, where Orson Wells produced his Othello. For Mondino, exoticism is attractive: this can also be seen in the series of carpets painted on eraclit panels that he made. The artist appropriates the universe of signs and cultures to which he feels attracted.

The exhibition set up in Forte dei Marmi will present more than forty works including paintings, sculptures and works on paper, which come from an important private Tuscan collection. An entire room of the exhibition will then be devoted entirely to music, a recurring theme in his production.

“Mondino has created a truly unique cultural coinè, in which contemporary art is not only a place of concentration of the symbolic, but also an archive of different cultures, a Borgesian panopticum in which to observe the universe from a unique perspective,” the curator wrote in the catalog. “The artist has really given travel and the confrontation of different worlds and experiences not only a space in contemporary art, which is often folded in on itself, but also the fascination of a physical and intellectual adventure. In Italian painting and art, Mondino was able to bring intelligence and irony; his work was always a stimulus to look at art as a continuous and happy quest.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog with a text by Valerio Dehò and a rich iconographic apparatus.

For info: www.villabertelli.it

Hours: In August from 5 to 10 p.m. (in conjunction with scheduled performances, the exhibition may be temporarily closed. It is suggested to contact the venue before visiting). In September, Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Free admission.

Image: Aldo Mondino, Ex Libris (1979; oil on canvas, 100 x 145 cm).

Aldo Mondino's extraordinary travels on display in Forte dei Marmi

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