Two exhibitions with contemporary mosaics in Bologna, as part of the Ravenna Biennale

As part of the seventh edition of the Biennale of Contemporary Mosaic, two exhibitions will open in the exhibition spaces of theLegislative Assembly in Bologna on November 3, 2022.

For the first time, Ravenna’s Biennale of Contemporary Mosaic involves the city of Bologna, with the two exhibitions Georges Mathieu, Homage to Odoacre. History and Images of a Revolutionary Mosaic and With Mosaic, Contemporary in and around Ravenna, both curated by Sandro Malossini and Gloria Evangelisti.

“The choice of our spaces to host two exhibitions as part of the Contemporary Mosaic Biennial fills me with pride,” said Legislative Assembly President Emma Petitti. “The association with the Biennale, the City of Ravenna and the City of Ravenna Art Museum mean a lot to an institution that wants to be part and present, in proximity as well as in production, of initiatives that have such a great cultural impact. The importance of this collaboration is linked to the Legislative Assembly’s desire to be not only a place of institutions, but a common cultural space, of public belonging, of enrichment for itself and for all visitors who would like to share with us time and pleasure of knowledge.”

“Mosaic is part of the city’s deepest identity and is the language through which Ravenna imagines itself and tells its story to the world,” commented Ravenna City Councilor for Culture Fabio Sbaraglia. “For this reason, the collaboration that the Emilia Romagna Region wanted to offer for this VII Biennial of Contemporary Mosaic is very important. The exhibitions presented in the headquarters of the Legislative Assembly will tell the story of an artistic scene in Ravenna that, since the second half of the 20th century, has been the protagonist of a continuous process of research, experimentation and revival in the contemporary world of a noble and very ancient technique that in the dialogue and confrontation with the artistic languages of the present releases its best expressive potential.”

Daniele Torcellini, coordinator of the Mosaic Biennial, explained that "the two exhibitions curated by Sandro Malossini and Gloria Evangelisti are closely linked. In the context of the 1959 Exhibition of Modern Mosaics, which saw a large group of artists from the 1950s create mosaic works in collaboration with the mosaicists and mosaicists of Ravenna, Georges Mathieu, whose story is told in the exhibition Georges Mathieu, Homage to Odoacre. History and Images of a Revolutionary Mosaic, refused to make a pictorial sketch to be translated into mosaic. He prefers to create a work himself, employing conventional and unconventional materials and techniques, thus reinventing the possibilities of the medium. The first to reap the ripest fruits of the French artist’s gesture of rupture are the artists and women artists whose birth is precisely placeable in the years when the Ravenna exhibition was being opened to the public, late 1950s-early 1960s. In their wake, others and others followed, up to the younger generations, delineating a post-Byzantine scene of Ravenna mosaic, presented in the exhibition Con il mosaico, contemporaneity in Ravenna e dintorni."

The exhibitions

Created in 1959 by Georges Mathieu, Homage to Odoacer is the mosaic that, more than any other, commissioned for the Modern Mosaicists exhibition held in Ravenna in 1959, was the bearer of innovation inmosaic art. The exhibition features a 1/1 scale reproduction of the mosaic, now in storage at the City of Ravenna Museum of Art, numerous period photographs, which are owed to Roberto Pagnani, a Ravenna art patron and collector, that depict Georges Mathieu during the making of the mosaic, some documents related to communications between the two, and, for the first time, three gouaches that Mathieu made, also in 1959, during his stay in Ravenna are exhibited together.

In the exhibition Con il mosaico, contemporaneity in and around Ravenna, mosaic takes center stage through the work of twenty-three artists belonging to different generations and using new techniques. The artists in the exhibition are Giuliano Babini, Luca Barberini, Dusciana Bravura, Marco Bravura, CaCO3, Marco De Luca, Francesca Fabbri, Giovanna Galli, Takako Hirai, Marcello Landi, Annalisa Marcucci, Verdiano Marzi, Stefano Mazzotti, Silvia Naddeo, Felice Nittolo, Luciana Notturni, Marco Pellizzola, Paolo Racagni, Marco Santi, Almuth Schöps, Daniele Strada, Enzo Tinarelli, and Sara Vasini.

“Mathieu’s speed of execution,” commented curator Sandro Malossini, "so far from the conventional canons of mosaic, disrupts modes and above all thinking about what mosaic is, how it can be interpreted and manifested also, and especially, by becoming a work of art: opening a well-defined furrow between tradition and innovation. In the exhibition With Mosaic, the tiles are no longer the absolute protagonists, but become memory in the works of many of the twenty-three invited artists. New materials, new media and different techniques bring us to know a new youth of a millenary tradition."

For Pagnani, of theGhigi-Pagnani Archive in Ravenna, “the strongest emotion was Mathieu’s emotion at the memory of the ancient friendship that bound him to my grandfather Roberto, who hosted him several times in his house in Ravenna and helped him to study ancient and modern mosaic, as well as to recover in Murano the particular tesserae that he needed to make the first informal mosaic of the 20th century.”

This year’s Biennale makes up for the 2021 edition, which was suspended due to the pandemic, and anticipates the 2023 edition by offering a month and a half of events (from October 8 to November 27) organized throughout the territory. In addition to Ravenna, Faenza (a city with which the Biennial has a well-established relationship) and Bologna, the Biennial also includes initiatives in Riccione (Rimini). Overall, there are more than one hundred artists from twenty countries around the world. Sixty exhibition spaces with over fifty exhibitions hosted, as well as events, conferences and guided tours.

The Mosaic Biennial is promoted and organized by the Municipality of Ravenna, thanks to the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region, with the coordination of Daniele Torcellini of Mar (Art Museum of the City of Ravenna).

The exhibitions will be open until Tuesday, Nov. 22, Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with free admission.

For info: www.biennalemosaicoravenna.it; call 051.527 5768-5826 or write to gabinettopresidenteal@regione.emilia-romagna.it

Image: Annalisa Marcucci, Scent, detail (2022; mosaic glass material, enamels, metal leaf material, gold, gold leaf, brass, mortar, watercolor, copper tape; 100 x 60 x 2.5 cm)

Two exhibitions with contemporary mosaics in Bologna, as part of the Ravenna Biennale

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