San Marino welcomes an exhibition on the Transavantgarde

From June 2 to September 22, 2024, the Palazzo SUMS in San Marino is hosting the exhibition Transavanguardia. The Vitality of the Contemporary, organized by the Secretariat of State for Education and Culture, Department of Tourism and Culture, Cultural Institutes and FR Istituto d’Arte Contemporanea S.p.a., in collaboration with Claudio Poleschi Arte Contemporanea. Curated by Alessandro Gea, the exhibition will open on Saturday, June 1, at 6 p.m. The exhibition includes some 50 works by Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria and Mimmo Paladino. These paintings and sculptures offer ample evidence of the research conducted in the 1980s, at the height of Transavanguardia, and include more recent realizations that actualize the foundations of the movement, laid by Achille Bonito Oliva almost half a century ago.

The cardinal principle linking the works in the exhibition is the primacy of the subjectivity of the artist, who implements individual and free research. The authors on display, although different in experience and language, are united by the desire to restore the work of art to its centrality, rediscovering the pleasure of being artists, in opposition to a strongly ideologized and political art. Using traditional media and returning to figuration, understood as sign and color, the artists arrive at a new form of expression, the core of which is not logical and rational, but poetic and evocative. The exhibition is an opportunity to explore the works of these influential Italian artists, highlighting the vitality and evolution of the Transavanguardia movement in the context of contemporary art.

The Republic of San Marino, moreover, is historically linked to the development of the Transavanguardia and preserves in its territory numerous testimonies of this important artistic movement. As early as 1982 San Marino dedicated an exhibition to the movement, which was also spreading to the rest of Europe, with a catalog edited by Achille Bonito Oliva, entitled La Transavanguardia tedesca. Later, in 1996, the Prima Bella Mostra Italiana by Sandro Chia and Enzo Cucchi, inaugurated in San Marino, was an ideal follow-up to this exhibition.

As a confirmation of these significant experiences, two fundamental works related to the Transavanguardia can now be found in the Republic of the Titan: the painting Prima Bella Mostra Italiana of 1995, created by four hands by Chia and Cucchi and conserved at the National Gallery of San Marino, and the work Scala Santa of 1987, painted in encaustic by Enzo Cucchi on a wall of the Chapel of the Scala Santa at the Monastery of Santa Chiara. These works constitute tangible evidence of the influence and contribution of Transavantgarde in the sphere of contemporary art, not only in Italy but also internationally.

“Forty-five years after the origin of Transavantgarde,” writes curator Alessandro Gea, “the San Marino exhibition at Palazzo SUMS does not want to limit itself to celebrating an important movement that has also established itself overseas, but rather to highlight how much some of its peculiarities still influence the art world today, consciously or unconsciously. It is this ’vitality of the contemporary’ that was intended to be represented in the exhibition’s itinerary, highlighting how current topics, such as change as mutation, reception that reduces the differences between high and low, nomadism also interpreted as experiential growth, can meet in the utterances of the Transavantgarde. Topics, those mentioned, that are the main theme of San Marino’s last three national participations in the Venice Biennale, designed and realized by FR Istituto d’Arte Contemporanea S.p.a.”

“It is an honor for us to realize on San Marino territory the exhibition Transavanguardia. The Vitality of the Contemporary,” declare Alessandro Bianchini, Roberto Felicetti and Vincenzo Rotondo of FR Istituto d’Arte Contemporanea S.p.a. “With this project, included in the cycle of the Great Exhibitions supported by the State of the Republic of San Marino, we confirm and consolidate our collaboration with the Government, which had already led us to the organization of the San Marino National Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2022 and 2024 and the Biennale Architettura 2023. The exhibition stems from the desire to further explore an important topic, which in recent years we have analyzed through national and international exhibitions, namely the theme of nomadism, of a vitality and freedom of movement that never before should be real, possible and global.”

The exhibition Transavanguardia. The Vitality of the Contemporary is part of the Great Exhibitions project of San Marino Arte Cultura, the seal of quality of the Secretariat of State for Education and Culture and the Cultural Institutes of the Republic of San Marino. Palazzo Sums can be visited daily from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. For information and reservations: T. +378 0549 909421. Full admission Euro 8, reduced Euro 4, free admission available. For further information: https://sanmarinoartecultura.com/, www.fristitutodarte.com. Hashtag: #transavanguardiasanmarino.

San Marino welcomes an exhibition on the Transavantgarde

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