OTTO HOFMANN. The poetics of Bauhaus

In 2009 the Bauhaus celebrated its 90th anniversary of existence. For this occasion, the Palazzo Ducale of Genoa hosts, from October 2009 until February 14th, 2010, a retrospective exhibition of one of the most important artists from this school: Otto Hofmann.
The exhibition shows us a wide historic path of life of the artist through his work which definently left its mark on the vanguard of the XX century.
Otto Hofmann tells a story of a difficult life, in a very turbulent period which started in the thirties of the XX century, during his stay at the Bauhaus of Dessau. The story continues through years of the Nazi domination and censorship when a lot of his work was confiscated and accused as degenerated art. Then follows the time of the full immersion in the War and the imprisonment in Russia. A precious collection of watercolor paintings shows us the artist’s feelings and state of mind, horrified by the chaos that was spread all over the Europe. (more…)

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2000 Years of Flavian Dynasty in a Touring Exhibition in Rome

A very special exhibition is still under way in Rome, set up to celebrate the “birthday” of one of the greatest personages of our history. In fact, the notorious Tito Flavio Vespasiano this year has his 2000^th birthday, and his city, the wonderful Rome decided to celebrate the event with a particular touring exhibition which until January 2010 will go through the whole capital.

The great exhibition “Divus Vespasianus. Il Bimillenario dei Flavi” (“Divus Vespasianus The two-thousand-year Flavian”) is dedicated to the plebeian emperor, who coming from the army was able to wear the emperor crown; it is divided into six sections in which portraits, (more…)

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Giorgio de Chirico and his drawings on display in Rome

Until April 19^th, at Carlo Bilotti Museum at Aranciera of Villa Borghese, the exhibition dedicated to the great metaphysical genius Giorgio de Chirico is under way.

This event is part of the wide range of exhibitions organized between 2008 and 2010, entitled “Immortalità a Giorgio de Chirico” (“Immortality for Giorgio de Chirico”), on the occasion of the 120^th recurrence after his birth.

This exhibition is absolutely different from the ones dedicated to the painter until this moment, inasmuch as for the first time there will not be his paintings on display, but his drawings. The exhibition, entitled “La magia della linea. 110 disegni di de Chirico dalla Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico” (“The magic of line. 110 drawings by De Chirico from the Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico”), puts on display a genre which has always been considered subordinate in comparison to painting.

On the other hand, De Chirico sustained that drawings were an independent genre, with its good reputation and prestige; the line traced on the paper was a free and spontaneous expression of the human soul, able to (more…)

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Genius and Madness create the real Artwork

An exhibition entirely dedicated to the greatest protagonists of the international scenery of modern and contemporary art will start on 31^st January. The exhibition, entitled “Art, Genius and Madness. Artist’s Day and Night” will be housed at Santa Maria della Scala Museum Complex, in the wonderful city of Siena.

This event, just for its title, promises a really special exhibition path, with no doubt absolutely different from the others until now proposed in Italy. The heart of the exhibition will be represented by 300 beautiful works among sculptures and paintings, carefully chosen for their emotional intensity of colours and shapes. These artworks will have the duty to tell us about the suspected relationship, documented from time immemorial, between genius and madness, between inimitable artistic talent and mental uneasiness.

Divided into 8 sections, the exhibition intends to research and inquire into the artwork and the relationship with its creator from different points of view: artistic, scientific, anthropological or psychiatric. 300 artworks of (more…)

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From Psychoanalysis to Art. Artworks on Display in Siena

Still a month before the closure of one of the most interesting and particular exhibitions open in 2008, “La Lente di Freud. Una Galleria dell’inconscio” (“The Lens of Freud. A Gallery of Unconscious“).

The event, on display in the amazing halls of Museum Complex Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, suggests an artistic itinerary in a class by itself, analyzing an accurate selection of about 200 artworks (among watercolors, India ink drawings, woodcuts and etchings), in the psychoanalytic movement introduced by Freud.

The exhibition suggests a new way to look at the artwork and to the artist through the Lens of Freud. The artworks speak, explain on their own the cultural and anthropological content that produced them, and invite the exhibition’s visitors to a new interpretation.

Freud, the philosopher universally recognized as the father of Psychoanalysis, was in fact the first to (more…)

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The Museum is not a Drag

In Milan “Il Museo non è una palla” (“The Museum is not a drag”)…no, I’m not making fun of you, this is just the title of the great review of events which the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci of Milan offers for Christmas.

Continuously from 20^th December until 6^th January, the museum will turn into a book of history and science, which will have all the answers to all curious people’ questions.

Of course, the chapters of this book are the numerous initiatives in the works; a rich calendar full of activities, exhibitions and events in fact will lead you in the pursuit of the secrets of important scientific and technological studies and researches.

The events have been subdivided according to the theme in order to (more…)

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Macchiaioli Painters and Photography: the History of Art exposed at Museo Alinari of Florence

The whole year, which is coming to an end, has shown as absolute protagonist of Florence painting universe, Giovanni Fattori, undisputed master of the Italian Macchiaioli.

Four different exhibitions have been organized in honor of this great artist, four exhibitions which have shown the public hundreds of significant and exceptionally beautiful artworks, some of which have been subject of an exhibition for the first time.

In fact, after “Fattori and Naturalism in Tuscany”, “The places of Giovanni Fattori” and “The other side of the soul. Portraits of Giovanni Fattori”, in the Museo Alinari halls of Florence, the extraordinary exhibition “Macchiaioli Painters and Photography” has just come and it will last until 15^th February 2009.

The event will exhibit about 200 artworks among pictures and photographs, and it is organized in order to lead visitors through an artistic and historical itinerary, created by pictures and eternally captured in photographs.  The last exhibition in chronological order, but surely not least as regarding importance, it entirely faces the theme of the relationship between the painting of the greatest representatives of Macchiaioli movement and (more…)

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Lucca pays homage to Pompeo Batoni, the Grand Tour’s Portraitist

Lucca, one of the most beautiful cities in Versilia, dedicates an exhibition to a great Italian 18th century artist: “Pompeo Batoni l’Europa delle Corti e il Grand Tour” (“Pompeo Batoni, Europe with its Courts and the Grand Tour”).

Organized to celebrate the 300th anniversary since the artist’s birth, the exhibition has been inaugurated the last 6th December, and the picturesque rooms of Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) of Lucca will house it until 29th March 2009.

With this exhibition, the entire artistic itinerary of Pompeo Batoni will be retraced, with a path which is branched into 100 artworks belonging to some European and American public and private collections, testimony of the great artistic sensibility of this painter, who (more…)

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In Venice an Exhibition to give voice to Depero’s Futurism

At Correr Museum of Venice, an extraordinary exhibition is underway, and it’s dedicated to one of the founding fathers of Italian Futurism, Fortunato Depero. The exhibition’s name is “DEPERO - Opere della collezione Fedrizzi” (“Depero - Works from the Fedrizzi Collection”).

The exhibition, one of the many ones organized by the Fondazione Musei Civici of Venice on the occasion of the centennial of futurism, will be housed by the Correr Museum until 1^st March 2009. This great event had been made possible thanks to the Fedrizzi family, who agreed to gift the private collection belonging to Giuseppe Fedrizzi as a long-term loan to Fondazione Ca’ Pesaro.

The event displays about 80 artworks which date back to the period between 1914 and 1956, and are the real proof of Depero’s artistic genius, who succeeded in giving movement to each of his creations with the use of oils, temperas, charcoal drawings and advertising sketches.

Undisputed forerunner of our way of conceiving advertisement, Depero (more…)

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Francis Bacon in Palazzo Reale

Extended until 28th of August the exhibition that Palazzo Reale in Milan, in cooperation with Skira and Arthemisia organizes about Francis Bacon. He is considered the last of the great 20th century masters and the one who could transmit the uneasiness of the modern man in painting.

With this great event, the city of Milan wants to celebrate the centenary of Bacon’s birth that will occurr next year.

The exposition, handled by Professor Rudy Chiappini, shows in an exhaustive way the artistic career of the irish artist through its works coming from the most important museums and collections worldwide.

The core of the artistic display provides for the exposition of over one hundred works, almost all as yet unknown here in Italy, including eighty-two paintings and about fifteen drawings, plus as many objects that are part of the archive material carrying the artist’s mark. More than fifty years of career described by a large number of works which range from paintings to sketches and pictures.

A room of Palazzo Reale presents, for the first time in Italy, the photographic reproduction of Bacon’s studio of London, which was the little microcosm where he lived between 1961 and 1992, the chaotic studio where he kept all his books, papers, sketches, colours, canvases, photographs and notes, and everything else that could be a source of inspiration for him. The show opens with a set of important works on paper, which were only found after the artist’s death and have never been displayed in Italy before. Then it continues with the paintings dating back to the years after the Second World War, when Bacon made himself known at an international level thanks to the “Studies for Figures” and to his “Heads”.

Special attention is given to document Bacon’s activity in the ’50s, which was devoted to portraits made just for his friends or made to order. These paintings are dwelled by blurred and ghastly figures, desfigured and deformed faces and bodies disappearing into the darkness of the background. During the following decade, his characters started appearing in a more definite and lit space and they gain volume and expressiveness. In the great triptychs of the ’70s, his care for individual subjects had become slightly exasperating.

Among the works exposed, we mention in particular “Three Studies of the Male Back” and “Triptych”. Only during the later years of his life, Bacon stopped “fighting” with the characters of his paintings, showing their inner essence and transforming them into a few spots of colour clotted on neutral backgrounds.

A voyage (more…)

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