At Vittoriale degli Italiani, Dante gets Pop in dialogue with D'Annunzio

It will be set up from June 20 to September 12, 2021 at the Vittoriale degli Italiani in Gardone Riviera, the #DantePOP exhibition, the first stage of artist Sandra Rigali’s traveling project, which intends to retrace a pop-literary bridge between Lombardy and Tuscany in the sign of Dante Alighieri, on the occasion of the seven hundredth anniversary of the Supreme Poet’s death and the centenary of the Vittoriale.

Curating the exhibition is Alice Traforti, who says, "Underlying the #DantePOP exhibition is the desire to bring the public closer to the figure of the Poet, understood above all as a ’man of change.’ Seven hundred years after his death, many issues that were avant-garde for his time turn out to be still dramatically sensitive in ours, revealing the need for a new cultural revolution in continuity with his legacy. Sandra Rigali tells us about the Poet and his vision of the world through a parallelism between literary sources and today’s facts (newspaper clippings), highlighting the strong link between Dante’s work and the present society, in order to proudly reclaim beauty, art and our culture."

Sandra Rigali returns to the Vittoriale degli Italiani, four years after her 2017 exhibition project, with a solo show closely linked to the place that hosts her, namely the monumental citadel built by Gabriele d’Annunzio on the shores of Lake Garda. In fact, a nucleus of works will be dedicated to the dialogue between Dante and d’Annunzio, emphasizing the important contribution that each of the two made to the Italian language.

The exhibition will be set up inside the structure of the MAS (the anti-submarine motorboat used for the “Beffa di Buccari”) and will bring together about fifty unpublished works created specifically for #DantePOP between 2020 and 2021, as well as two works dedicated to d’Annunzio made by the artist in 2017.

On display will be large-format canvases and small tiles, like postcards of a trip to Italy that crosses real and imaginary places; some significant moments of d’Annunzio’s work, related to his most avant-garde ideas, such as the role of women and language as a mirror of society.

From a technical point of view, Sandra Rigali uses layered, more or less textural painting, which also includes collage, newspaper clippings and covers, with typed interventions and details decorated with gold leaf.

“Sign, color and matter are my voice,” declares the artist. “The pop portrait embodies a collective identity, abstracting it from the spirit of time to project it into eternity.”

“The year 2021 is an extraordinary anniversary,” writes Giordano Bruno Guerri, president of the Il Vittoriale degli Italiani Foundation, “because we are celebrating not only the seven hundredth anniversary of Dante’s death, but also the Vittoriale’s first one hundred years of life. A common thread unites these two great Italians, Dante and d’Annunzio, both creators of the word and devotees of saving Beauty: the common belonging is so deeply felt by the poet of the Laudi that he vanity to say Italian poetry begins with 200 verses of Dante and, after a long interval, continues in me.”

The second stage of the project is scheduled to take place in the fall, from Sept. 25 to Nov. 6, 2021, at the Stanze della Memoria in Barga, with the addition of an additional core of works on the link between Dante and Pascoli, in collaboration with the Fondazione Giovanni Pascoli.

Through the hashtag #iosonoDante the public will be able to become protagonists of the event: a “faceless mirror” will accompany the exhibition at each venue and invite visitors to take a selfie to be spread on the web.

The #DantePOP project is realized in collaboration with Fondazione Il Vittoriale degli Italiani and Fondazione Giovanni Pascoli of the GardaMusei circuit, with the patronage of the Lombardy Region, the Province of Brescia and the Municipality of Gardone Riviera, with contributions from the Regional Council of Tuscany and the patronage of the Municipality of Barga and the Municipality of Gallicano, with the support of Toscolano paper and Villa Pascoli onlus.

For information on the exhibition at the Vittoriale degli Italiani, accessible daily from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.: www.vittoriale.it .

Image: Sandra Rigali, Dante Pop (2020; mixed media on canvas, 30 x 30 cm). Courtesy Sandra Rigali. Ph. Credit Ryo Hayashida

At Vittoriale degli Italiani, Dante gets Pop in dialogue with D'Annunzio

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