Longiano in Emilia Romagna, is hosting for the first time in Italy an exhibition dedicated to the four engravers most beloved by Leonardo Sciascia (Racalmuto, 1921 - Palermo, 1989). The exhibition, titled Etching for Leonardo Sciascia, will be inaugurated on Saturday, June 14, 2025, at 6 p.m. at the Tito Balestra Onlus Foundation’s Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, inside the Malatesta Castle in the Romagna town. The exhibition project, curated by Flaminio Balestra, brings together a total of 90 works from private collections and funds of the Foundation itself, and will remain open until August 17, 2025. The event builds on the Les Automates folder, published by Sellerio Editore in 1974, which included four etchings by Edo Janich and a text by the Sicilian writer. Since that publication, Sciascia pointed several times, on different occasions, to the names of Giorgio Morandi, Luigi Bartolini, GiuseppeViviani and Edo Janich as points of reference in contemporary printmaking. It is from such suggestions that the idea for the exhibition was born, which aims to restore an overall look at the work of these four artists, who are also already present in the permanent collection of the Tito Balestra Foundation.
“Among the different expressions of figurative art, etching is the one that comes closest to literary expression and is most apt to reveal the spontaneous man.” And again, “a deep and dangerous art, full of pitfalls and revealing the defects of a spirit as clearly as its qualities.”
“As Baudelaire understood it, as we understand it (but wishing that there would be very few of us back to bite the same fruit), there are very few true engravers today,” Sciascia declares. “Having disappeared Bartolini, Morandi, Viviani, in Italy the fingers of one hand are enough to count them: and perhaps stopping at the fourth who is certainly the young Janich.”
The exhibition stands out for the originality of its curatorial approach. Flaminio Balestra, in collaboration with collectors Paolo Bassano, Alberto Marcelletti and Luciana Bartolini, as well as Edo Janich himself, has selected 60 works, 15 for each artist, illustrating a relevant part of each artist’s engraving career. In addition to the works temporarily on display is the permanent section of the collection donated by Anna Balestra, where further evidence of the graphic production of the same authors can be found: seven etchings by Morandi dated between 1921 and 1956, eighteen engravings by Bartolini made between 1926 and 1962, a linocut by Viviani dated 1937, as well as some works recently donated by Janich, dated from 1974 to 2023. The selected works offer an extensive overview of the graphic and poetic pursuits of the four artists. By Giorgio Morandi, a central figure in twentieth-century Italian engraving, works executed between 1924 and 1961 are presented, in which a profound sentiment of existence is captured, expressed through a skillful economy of formal means.
Luigi Bartolini, active between the 1920s and 1930s, is represented by a series of naturalistic subjects, often set in rural settings, which testify to his interest in landscape and everyday life. Giuseppe Viviani, on display with works made between 1933 and 1958, instead restores suspended atmospheres, filtered through a poetic sensibility prone to melancholy and introspection.
Edo Janich, author of a production extended between 1972 and 1999, in which the dreamlike dimension and attention to detail merge into a refined and recognizable engraving language, closes the itinerary. Janich, whose relationship with Sciascia came to fruition in the aforementioned Les Automates portfolio, is the only one of the four artists still living and has actively contributed to the realization of the exhibition, including through recent donations to the Foundation. Alongside the exhibition, a catalog is planned to be published with critical texts by Giuseppe Appella and Rolando Bellini. The initiative is promoted by the Tito Balestra Onlus Foundation with the contribution of the General Directorate for Education, Research and Cultural Institutes of the Ministry of Culture, the Cultural Heritage Sector of the Emilia-Romagna Region, the Municipality of Longiano and Romagna Iniziative. It also obtained the patronage of the Leonardo Sciascia Foundation and the Sellerio publishing house.
The exhibition will be open Tuesday through Sunday, including holidays, with different hours for the summer months: from June 14 to July 31, the opening will be from 10 a.m. to noon and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.; in August, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. The admission will also provide access to the Foundation’s permanent collection, thus offering the public an opportunity to compare the works temporarily on display with those belonging to the permanent collection.
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| Morandi, Bartolini, Viviani and Janich: the four engravers loved by Sciascia on display in Romagna |
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