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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251205
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260302
DTSTAMP:20260613T191825
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SUMMARY:Franco Mazzucchelli. Blow Up
DESCRIPTION:Opening\, March 8\, 6:30 PM\n  \nCurated by Marina Pugliese\n  \nIn collaboration with MUDEC – Museum of Cultures\, Milan\n  \n  \nThe MAN Museum in Nuoro announces the upcoming solo exhibition Blow Up\, dedicated to Italian artist Franco Mazzucchelli (Milan\, 1939). Curated by Marina Pugliese and developed through a partnership with MUDEC – Museum of Cultures in Milan\, the exhibition traces Mazzucchelli’s artistic research from the 1960s to the present\, through a selection of works and photographs that highlight the experimental\, social\, and participatory nature of his practice. \nIn keeping with MAN’s ongoing research into artists whose work engages with themes of sustainability and community\, Blow Up retraces the artist’s path through public and shared space\, artistic actions that have reactivated and redefined urban environments through participatory interventions. The exhibition reflects how Mazzucchelli has\, over time\, invited communities to reclaim neglected spaces through new meanings and collective engagement. \nKey works in the show reference his early Abbandoni (Abandonments) from the 1960s and the later series A. TO A. (Art to Abandon)\, including interventions staged outside the Alfa Romeo factory on Via Traiano in Milan (1971)\, in the square of the Art High School in Turin (1971)\, and in Piazza dei Priori in Volterra (1973). These actions are centered around the act of “abandoning” large inflatable PVC structures in public spaces: embodied gestures of openness\, interaction\, and critical reflection on liberating art from traditional exhibition contexts. \nOriginally intended for children at a nearby playground\, the 1971 Alfa Romeo intervention unexpectedly became a moment of leisure and imagination for factory workers and ultimately even a political tool\, when workers used the inflatable structure to block the passage of vehicles. In Volterra\, in 1973\, during a landmark environmental art exhibition curated by Enrico Crispolti\, Mazzucchelli’s inflatables turned into the centerpiece of a collective celebration. In Turin\, the installation of a giant inflatable arch in an urban setting led to new interpretations of both landscape and social fabric. \nOne historically significant work\, presented for the first time in a public Italian institution\, is Caduta di Pressione(Pressure Drop)\, first shown in 1974 at Galleria Diagramma in Milan. The piece involved measuring oxygen consumption in a room using a hand-held vacuum gauge\, depending on the number of guests present. The result was a kind of cartography of breath and vacuum\, recorded like a scientific experiment in file cards that still preserve pressure readings and the names of visitors\, including artists and critics such as Agnetti\, Fabro\, Nigro\, La Pietra\, as well as Gillo Dorfles\, Urs Lüthi\, and Tommaso Trini. \nThe exhibition also features two monumental inflatable PVC sculptures: a 26-meter-long Squid (Totano) and a 12-meter-high Cone\, exemplifying Mazzucchelli’s concept of sculpture as an expanded\, temporary form. These synthetic\, large-scale structures take on playful\, non-functional forms that alter architectural space and provoke spontaneous visitor interaction. Over the years\, Mazzucchelli has meticulously documented these public responses as a form of behavioral analysis in the presence of these foreign and unexpected insertions. \nA site-specific installation from the Riappropriazioni (Reappropriations) cycle—first developed in the 1970s at locations such as Parco Sempione and La Triennale in Milan—occupies and engulfs one of the museum’s rooms. Constructed from plastic film membranes\, the work cancels spatial boundaries and proposes new modes of aesthetic experience. Viewers are invited to physically enter the structure\, immersed in its metaphysical suspension\, which clings to ceilings and floors like a living membrane. Enclosed within it is an early sculpture by Mazzucchelli\, created during his time studying under Marino Marini at the Brera Academy. The work embodies the ongoing dialogue between the artist and the collective dimension of his practice: art as a space for encounter\, a process open to symbolic reappropriation of space by its inhabitants. \nThrough the interplay of monumentality and lightness\, suspension and adhesion\, Mazzucchelli’s work embraces materials once considered experimental—such as plastic—while offering contemporary ecological reflections. The exhibition title\, Blow Up\, nods to the explosive imagery of Antonioni’s iconic film\, capturing the essence of an artist who has redefined the language of contemporary sculpture\, moving art out of the museum and into daily life in a constant exploration of aesthetics\, society\, and participation. \nFranco Mazzucchelli\nBorn in 1939 in Milan\, where he currently lives and works. Mazzucchelli is renowned for his pioneering experimentation with synthetic materials beginning in the 1960s\, and for his large-scale environmental installations capable of disrupting the everyday conventions of local communities. His practice—close to the ideal of total participation—investigates social dynamics\, with works that become temporary parts of the urban landscape. The public is naturally drawn to touch\, move\, play with\, and even take them away. \nSince the early 2000s\, his research has taken on a more aestheticized direction with the Bieca Decorazione(Dull Decoration) series: an ironic term the artist uses to describe painting as a purely aesthetic pleasure\, while critiquing its links to market logic. Mazzucchelli’s environmental installations have been presented in numerous locations in Italy and abroad\, including the Alfa Romeo Factory\, Milan; Piazza San Fedele\, Milan; Brera Academy of Fine Arts\, Milan; Castello Sforzesco\, Milan; Piazza dei Priori\, Volterra; Lake Como; Munich; the Camargue. \nHis works have featured in major international exhibitions\, including the 60th Venice Biennale (2024); 13th and 11th Quadriennale of Rome (1999 and 1986); the 37th Venice Biennale (1976); the 15th Milan Triennale (1973); and in prominent international institutions such as MAPS – Museum of Art in Public Spaces\, Køge (2025); Museo Madre\, Naples (2024); MACRO\, Rome (2021); Centre Pompidou-Metz (2021); Cité de l’Architecture\, Paris (2021); ArtScience Museum\, Singapore (2020); Konsthall Lund (2020); Kunsthalle Wien (2019); ZKM – Center for Art and Media\, Karlsruhe (2019); nGbK\, Berlin (2018); and Museo del Novecento\, Milan (2018)\, among others. In 2022\, Mazzucchelli received the Alfredo d’Andrade Lifetime Achievement Award. He served as Acting Director of Brera 2 and Professor of Sculpture Techniques at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. \n 
URL:https://www.museoman.it/en/event/franco-mazzucchelli-blow-up/
CATEGORIES:Current Exhibitions
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251205
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260302
DTSTAMP:20260613T191825
CREATED:20251020T095010Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251205T110812Z
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SUMMARY:Franco Pinna. Sardegna a colori. Fotografie recuperate 1953-67
DESCRIPTION:Concept and scientific direction: Archivio Franco Pinna\nInauguration: Friday 5 December 2025 at 6:30 pm\n  \nThe exhibition Franco Pinna. Sardegna a colori. Fotografie recuperate 1953–67 marks a further stage in the exploration undertaken by the MAN on photographic language and its relationship with Sardinia\, a land of inspiration and experimentation for generations of artists\, besides celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of the acclaimed Sardinian photographer’s birth. Franco Pinna (La Maddalena\, 1925 – Rome\, 1978) was a master of 20th-century Italian photography and\, through this exhibition\, the MAN is showcasing works that were long forgotten\, offering visitors a new and surprising dimension of his perspective: that of colour. In keeping with recent investigations carried out by the Museum on authors and visions of the Sardinian landscape\, this exhibition broadens our perception of a photographer who was almost exclusively appreciated so far thanks to his black and white shots. \nThe exhibition comprises approximately eighty works\, including colour photographs – most of these are displayed for the very first time – and archival material\, and unfolds through a journey across Pinna’s visual and professional history\, offering new hints for a critical assessment of his oeuvre. The images were selected further to a thorough recovery and digital restoration of the original hues and are displayed along with black and white shots of the same objects\, thus offering an occasion for a comparison. The exhibition also includes transparencies retrieved from the Archivio Franco Pinna\, which testify to the comprehensive documentary approach endorsed by the photographer. A selection of period magazines\, including Vie Nuove\, Noi Donne\, L’Espresso\, and Panorama\, confirms his commitment to the use of colour\, which would lend a sense of modernity to the glossy magazines vs. the historicization implied in the classic black and white shots. \nThe exhibition begins with Orgosolo 1953\, Pinna’s first colour reportage in Sardinia\, to then explore the most meaningful stages of his production on the Island – Canne al vento (1958)\, Argia a Tonara (1960)\, and the shots used for his acclaimed volume Sardegna. Una civiltà di pietra (1961) – up to his reportages on banditry and the protests of shepherds of 1967. The sequences create a sort of long narrative\, highlighting the evolution of a language that takes on an autonomous and poetic dimension through colour\, capable of seizing the spirit that enlivens an archaic and all the same modern Sardinia. \nWhat emerges is the bond between documents and rituals\, which pervades his oeuvre and distinguishes his way of observing reality: as Federico Fellini quoted in 1976\, Pinna showed a “slowness typical of a hierophant”\, suspended between the gaze of a scientist and that of a minister of cult. It is precisely through this dimension suspended between documents and rituals that the exhibition housed at the MAN wants to review his oeuvre: a path through reality culminating in a revelation. \nFranco Pinna\n(La Maddalena\, 1925 – Rome\, 1978)\nOne of the most renowned photojournalists of his time\, Franco Pinna was a key figure of Italian photographic Neorealism. After activism in Rome in the Resistance movement and a brief stint as a documentary filmmaker\, he made his debut as a professional photographer in 1952 in the Roman cooperative Fotografi Associati and followed the anthropologist Ernesto de Martino on his ethnographic expeditions to the Lucania and Salento regions. In 1961\, he published Sardegna. Una civiltà di pietra\, which would be his most important publication. Beginning in 1964\, he became Federico Fellini’s trusted photographer. Through more than 300\,000 shots\, Pinna managed to combine civic engagement and aesthetic rigour\, documenting the transformation that Italy was going through in those years and capturing the human side of the 20thcentury with a poetic and keen gaze. \nThe Archivio Franco Pinna\, based in Rome and Bologna\, has gathered and enhanced the photographer’s heritage since 1997\, promoting research and exhibitions that keep his memory alive. \nConcept and scientific direction by Archivio Franco Pinna\nCurator: Paolo Pisanelli\, OfficinaVisioni \nin collaboration with Cinema del reale\, Erratacorrige\, Big Sur \nCoordination with MAN by Alessandro Moni \nDigitalisation\, digital restoration\, editing of photographs: Gloria Fulgeri\, Claudio Domini \nVideo-installation direction and editing: Matteo Gherardini\, Paolo Pisanelli \nOfficina Visioni coordination by Federica Facioni \nCatalogue by Nomos edizioni\, ita/en \nGraphic design by Sabina Era \n\n© Archivio Franco Pinna\, Rome/Bologna all rights reserved
URL:https://www.museoman.it/en/event/franco-pinna-sardegna-a-colori-fotografie-recuperate-1953-67/
CATEGORIES:Current Exhibitions
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20251205
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260302
DTSTAMP:20260613T191825
CREATED:20251020T095442Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251205T125652Z
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SUMMARY:ALFREDO CASALI. Isolitudine
DESCRIPTION:Opening\, December 5\, 6:30 PM\n  \nCurated by Massimo Ferrari and Chiara Gatti\n  \nIn the context of a year devoted to an extensive and multifaceted reflection on the concept of the island – understood not only in its geographical dimension\, but also as a semantic device\, a generator of narratives\, cosmologies\, ideals\, and utopias – the MAN Museum in Nuoro continues its path of investigation with a solo exhibition by Alfredo Casali\, entitled Isolitudine\, scheduled for the winter season. \nAfter MinorIsland Fotographic notes from 1990 to today Islands and Idols\,  the new exhibition (on view until November 16)\, is part of a series that explores the concept of insularity through different perspectives\, giving voice to artistic visions that question the meaning and boundaries of the island — as an idea that becomes a place\, a concept that takes shape in space. \nAn exponent of a pictorial research deeply devoted to the very language of painting and to its persistence in a delicate balance between narration and abstraction\, between sign and matter\, Alfredo Casali presents at the MAN Museum a body of new and recent works that delve into the theme of porous boundaries\, archaic origins\, voluntary detachment\, and\, at the same time\, the re-emergence from the shallows of forgetfulness. The neologism “isolitudine” shapes in his painting a complex and fascinating existential condition: that of those who identify with the island — in its physical coordinates\, but also in its dwelling within the unconscious. an ancestral longing for belonging\, intertwined with a melancholic sense of isolation. \nSailing through the territories of identity\, memory\, and the perception of the self and the world\, isolitudine becomes a state of mind — a fulfilling sorrow for the surrounding emptiness\, a vertigo before the liquid desert. Intense pages of modern insular literature\, from Salvatore Satta to Gesualdo Bufalino\, have unearthed the fossils of a life lived on the margins and yet at the centre — within a microcosm that is also infinite\, in a solitude that is also beauty. In this acute tension between rootedness and detachment\, between the thirst for elsewhere and the pride in that remote territoriality theorized by anthropologist Matteo Meschiari\, one rediscovers a universal dimension that unites distant peoples — all children of an island\, all inhabitants of isolitudine. \nAlfredo Casali gives visual form to it through painting. Since his earliest works\, influenced by the lyrical abstraction of Gastone Novelli and Cy Twombly\, by visual poetry\, and by a suspended figuration imbued with a sense of waiting and heir to Morandi’s silent lesson\, the artist has traced within space the most minimal boundaries — vital places confined to the dimension of an intimate everyday\, sublimated into domestic archetypes: the house\, the tree\, the chair\, the patch of landscape opening onto the void of the sea or the sky. Formal rigor\, geometric synthesis\, and an attention to the sign as both an expressive and literary element — rooted in his solid philosophical training — nourish a coherent and deeply meditated pictorial practice and imagery\, slow in gesture\, in pauses\, in the articulation of planes that construct further voids. His rarefied and essential poetics now reaches the threshold of the island — a drawing with frayed edges on the maps of consciousness\, an epiphany of rock and sand upon the Cartesian plane of human and cosmic geography. \nAlfredo Casali was born in Piacenza in 1955\, where he currently lives and works. He graduated in Philosophy from the University of Bologna in 1983\, under the supervision of Luciano Anceschi. After an articulated journey through painting\, visual poetry\, and theoretical studies\, he arrived at a personal artistic language characterized by an essential poetic inquiry and by the recurrence of archetypal elements organized in thematic cycles. Among the first to recognize the value of his work was Giovanni Fumagalli\, who welcomed him into the historic Galleria delle Ore in Milan and guided him as a mentor between 1986 and 1996. Casali took part in the 32nd Milan City Art Biennale (1993) and in the Cremona Biennale (1993 and 1999)\, and over the years has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows. Among his most significant exhibitions are the solo show at the San Fedele Cultural Center in Milan (2011); his participation in the exhibition dedicated to Imre Reiner and international abstraction at the Museum of Art of Mendrisio (Switzerland); and the group exhibitions Sogno e Confine (Biffi Gallery\, Piacenza\, 2012) and La natura obliqua (Il Chiostro Contemporary Art\, Saronno). In 2014\, he presented a solo exhibition at Galleria Ceribelli in Bergamo. Among his recent exhibitions\, in 2019 he showed at the Studio d’Arte del Lauro in Milan\, and in 2023 at MAN – Museum of Art of the Province of Nuoro\, in a project developed in collaboration with the University Campus of Agrigento. The recent exhibition held in 2023 at the Magazzino del Sale in Cervia\, entitled Alfredo Casali\, Giovanni Fabbri. Geografie vita\, territorio\, storia\, anticipated by a few months the major retrospective of 2024 Alfredo Casali. La memoria delle cose\, curated by Massimo Ferrari for Volumnia in the Renaissance nave of the former Church of Sant’Agostino in Piacenza. \nThey have written about him:  Michele Tavola\, Franco Fanelli\, Sara Fontana\, Stefano Fugazza\, Ivo Iori\, Stefano Crespi\, Flavio Arensi\, Chiara Gatti\, Marina De Stasio\, Rocco Ronchi\, Giorgio Seveso. \nCatalogue ITA/EN Nomos Edizioni \nText byi Massimo Ferrari and Chiara Gatti \nCoordination Rita Moro \nGraphic by Sabina Era \n  \n 
URL:https://www.museoman.it/en/event/alfredo-casali-isolitudine/
CATEGORIES:Current Exhibitions
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260313
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260615
DTSTAMP:20260613T191825
CREATED:20260129T090231Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260317T072440Z
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SUMMARY:Pellizza e Ballero. La divina luce
DESCRIPTION:curated by Chiara Gatti on a project by Rita Moro\nwith the scientific contribution of Gabriella Belli and Antonello Cuccu \n13 March – 14 June 2026\ninauguration: Friday 13 March at 7 pm \nA friendship\, an exchange of correspondence\, a shared vocation for landscape\, painting\, for translating nature into heartbeats of vibrant colour. This new project launched by the MAN Museum of Nuoro aims at tracing the ideal heritage that Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (1868-1907)\, the noble father of Italian Divisionism\, passed down to Antonio Ballero (1864-1932)\, a Sardinian artist who\, suspended between past and progress\, ferried a style of painting still imbued with precepts of Realism towards the experimental explorations of Divisionism\, conveying the late-romantic culture that distinguished the artistic landscape of Sardinia of the time in the direction of a scientific investigation into colour\, without neglecting a vibrant narrative of the images transposed onto the canvas. Antonio Ballero and Pellizza da Volpedo were bound by mutual esteem\, a strong bond that was broken by the tragic death of the Piedmontese artist. Drawing on Pellizza da Volpedo\, Ballero vigorously contributed to introducing Sardinia to the new language of painting and the theories delving into the “separation” of colours\, which were at the heart of the artistic debate on the national and international scale. It was precisely thanks to the lesson learned from Pellizza da Volpedo and an intense intellectual exchange with the latter that Ballero managed to conquer a leading role in the evolution of the artistic exploration experienced by his Island\, which rightfully took an active role – via his action – in the debate that was shaking the landscape of art on the ‘mainland’. \nThis project\, curated by Chiara Gatti and coordinated by Rita Moro\, with the scientific counselling of Gabriella Belli\, a major scholar of Italian Divisionism\, and of Antonello Cuccu\, a scholar and expert of Sardinian art\, explores the close connection between the solutions devised by the Sardinian master and the spur he received from his privileged relationship with Pellizza da Volpedo through an iconographic comparison and the letters the two artists exchanged between 1904 and 1907\, which document their contacts and their intense dialogue. Two works by Ballero were praised by Pellizza and labelled as a true “revelation”\, as he personally declared to the Sardinian artist in a brief letter. It was through and thanks to this ideal closeness that Ballero’s expressive and formal exploration shifted towards an aesthetic growth strewn with new and more powerful social content. \nThe exhibition path comprises over thirty works distributed by sections. They include ten masterpieces by Pellizza da Volpedo on loan from important Italian museums and galleries: the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence\, the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in Milan\, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan\, the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin\, the Pinacoteca Divisionismo in Tortona\, and the Pinacoteca in Alessandria; besides public and private collections that provide ongoing preservation and curatorial support for Antonio Ballero’s oeuvre\, including the Municipality of Atzara and the MAMA Museum\, the Chamber of Commerce\, Industry\, Craft\, and Agriculture of Nuoro\, the Banco di Sardegna bank\, and the MAN Museum of Nuoro with its collection of ten works by the Sardinian master. Thanks to a collaboration with the Ilisso publishing house of Nuoro\, the art exhibition will also display precious archival material\, the correspondence exchanged between the two artists\, coeval photographs of the Quarto Stato (The Fourth Estate)\, and period photographs of Ballero and Nuoro. \nAntonio Ballero debuted as a painter at the Esposizione Artistica Sarda (Sardinian Art Exhibition)\, held at the Palazzo della Provincia in Sassari in 1896. He would soon distinguish himself on a national level after swiftly detouring a Realism of macchiaioli imprint and a poetic feeling for the painted subject\, mostly landscapes\, and rather looking to the new style introduced by Divisionism and its multifaceted and variable conception of light and colour that was to be tackled via an innovating scientific method applied to painting. The style advocated by Ballero earned him the accolade of Pellizza da Volpedo. Salvatore Farina – an experimental writer born in Sorso who had moved to Milan\, where he became closely associated with the Scapigliatura and the Italian intelligentsia of the time – also acknowledged Ballero’s breakthrough in the art world and paralleled his action to Giovanni Segantini\, to his lyrical balance between Realism and Symbolism\, between a daily life imbued with mundane concerns and a reified sacred dimension that takes shape in the spectacle of nature and in the silent gestures that man performs to pay homage to the universe.\nBallero’s bonds and acquaintances with authors of the calibre of Grazia Deledda and Francesco Ciusa\, in Sardinia\, and of Leonardo Bazzaro and Carlo Fornara\, speaking of artists active in the rest of Italy\, contributed to stirring his vocation to give voice to and recount the diuturnal existence of the humble. His dignified figures\, solemn yet fragile in the face of the cosmos\, inhabit rural horizons where the profound sense of truth in things is sublimated in a timeless expectation. “The paramount pride of shepherds wandering through the bush\, the wild galloping of horses\, or the willowy and joyful movements of dancers”: that is how Ballero described his subjects\, who held on tightly to the traditions of his native land while being projected into the absolute. The radical shift from works such as Paesaggio con alberi (Landscape with Trees) from 1890 to paintings such as Mattino di Marzo (A March Morning) from 1903 ca. or L’appello serale (Evening Call) from 1904\, clearly shows the turning point of the Sardinian artist: the heritage of Corot with his use of colour tones\, fluid brushstrokes\, and vibrant naturalism\, which Ballero adhered to in his juvenile years\, was forsaken to the benefit of a painting achieved with small patches\, complementary colours\, penetrating twilights\, and a choral vision of the characters. \nPellizza Da Volpedo\, four years junior to Antonio Ballero but already in the spotlight of the national artistic landscape\, shared his vision with his peer from Nuoro: his thoughts on the theme of landscape\, on the spirit of truth\, and the power of observation that life requires to be grasped and translated into images\, through its intimate and continuous flow. Tracing a connection between the two artists and advancing points of contact therefore means to delve into the richness and results of their dialogue\, into the heritage that Pellizza passed down to his friend and how the latter managed to add his contribution to this legacy in his native land\, an environment marked by a different\, extremely reserved culture\, profoundly tied to and dependent on the harshness of its mountains and heart-wrenching tasks of shepherds. An analysis of the conception of Pellizza’s paintings – the scenes that filled his eyes when he glimpsed at moments of daily rural life\, suffering because of poverty notwithstanding a mystical hope for a better future – may help understand the evolution of Ballero’s style: the way he embraced a new poetics of everyday life. By wandering across villages\, or bordering alleys overlooking barns\, we may identify the stages of a journey and pinpoint them according to main themes. \nA New Technique for a New Light\nSome surviving works from 1894 document Antonio Ballero’s relentless studies on the issue of a relationship between colour and light and colour and material. This milestone date marks the development and growth of his production. Further to his participation at the historical Esposizione Artistica Sarda (Sardinian Art Exhibition) in 1896\, when his name was spotlighted along with his senior and more famous peer\, Giacinto Satta\, Ballero received the acknowledgement for his expressive talent from critics up-to-date with new explorations in the art field. The artistic scenario was at the time divided into two fronts: the advocates of the achievements of Pointillisme in France\, on the one hand\, and the coeval spreading of a scientific method focusing on the separation of colours championed by Divisionists in Italy\, on the other. The latter allowed for greater freedom as to sign and gesture in contrast to the stern rigorousness of their French counterparts. It is no coincidence that 1896 was the year of the Turin Triennale\, which enjoyed the participation of outstanding names\, including Morbelli\, Grubicy\, Longoni\, Nomellini\, Previati\, Tominetti\, who displayed paintings created by relying on the Divisionist technique. It goes without saying that the number of these innovative paintings was decidedly lower than canvases drawing on traditional languages. However\, they were crucial in setting a point of departure for the revolution that was about to take place. “Keeping colours separate and close to one another\, rather than mixing them on the palette”\, as Grubicy codified in the pages of the Triennale\, held in the same year\, became common practice to increase the best possible brightness in a painting\, whereby this special technique was meant to respond to an expressive need\, and was certainly not the ultimate goal of a flaunting virtuoso. “[…] I firmly believe – Pellizza would later state – that this is nothing but the means to lend greater effect to a work of art\, and the result will be more consistent with modern ideals.” At the dawn of the 20th century\, the Nuoro-born artist\, too\, embraced this new technique and stubbornly changed his horizon heading for a separation of chromatic elements\, which allowed for the creation of enveloping light effects\, patches of shadow\, and flickering flares\, the intensity of which had never been achieved before. In the wake of Pellizza\, Antonio Ballero declared in his turn: “The science concerning light and colours should always arouse your interest: only by relying on scientific methods will you acquire confidence of what you are doing. When you replicate the truth\, do not think of theories\, but rather of translating it with all means at your disposal. Do not embrace Divisionism in and of itself: you must be convinced that your vision will be better expressed by relying on it. When it is too apparent\, Divisionism damages a work of art: instead\, if you keep its positive principles in mind\, the resulting effect is as if you had created your work of art with no effort at all; the work of art must appear as the outcome of a spontaneous gesture. In my opinion\, it is not a question of championing a technique that relies solely on dots\, or lines\, or a blend of pigments; nor entirely smooth or rough\, because it varies as the expressions of nature do.” \nThe Destiny of the Humble\nNext to natural phenomena\, highlighted by the optical effects created by the Divisionist technique\, it is worth underlining the attention devoted by Pellizza da Volpedo and his Nuoro-born peer to a world inhabited by wretched and all the same heroic figures: wrecks\, countenances marked by suffering\, or motionless persons cloaked in dust. “Once back to my hometown\, the first thing I did was to portray my parents […]”\, Pellizza recounted in his memories published in Copialettere e minutari in 1895. The extensive literature focusing on realism that permeated the century was retained by Ballero\, thanks also to his relationship with Sebastiano Satta and Grazia Deledda. The three artists lived in and shared a land that – not so much dissimilarly from the town of Volpedo – soaked up lifeblood from nature\, returning harshness in turn\, in a sort of “demoniac sadness” that – quoting Salvatore Satta’s Il Giorno del giudizio (The Day of Judgement) – singled out Nuoro as a “nest of crows”\, a steep wasteland\, and his prominent people and shepherds as priests and bandits. The true joining link that\, in this section\, connects Ballero and Pellizza is the feeling of death in the present\, the metaphysics that crosses the gaze of their characters\, either dead or alive\, who are eternally dangling above the cliff of their existence. The characters portrayed by the two masters dialogue\, caressed by a compassionate light\, using a language that blends Divisionism and sentiment for the sacred in a boundless grievous land. Their figures become the mirror of the entire population living on earth and that is suddenly swallowed up\, thanks to the desperate sweetness of a painting that translates the destiny of the humble onto a palette of colours. Ballero’s courtyards\, silent and parched in summer\, become the symbols of the Sardinian world\, of its rhythms\, and its social truth. \nArt as a Social Function\nAgainst the backdrop of a late 19th-century gentrified Sardinia\, the region was hit by the same tragedies that Pellizza blamed by relying on his canvases to condemn them universally. Labour and oppression\, poverty and illnesses\, fragility and violence that the activism of his art contributed to denouncing with the visual and touching strength of a programmatic manifesto. “It is the works that ennoble the dignity and beauty of humble jobs and the life of people\, and that exalt and glorify their joy and sorrow\, that will anticipate a true art of the future.” This heartfelt statement\, voiced by Ballero in his younger days\, would regrettably stumble against the disillusionment with the modern world and a romantic idealism dismayed by the logic of power and labour exploitation. Social unrest spread all over Italy between the two centuries and became a spur to tackle new representations of daily life marked by iniquity\, which the social poetics of Divisionist masters translated into accusing images. This was the case of the massacre in Buggerru in 1904\, which occurred during a strike of miners that\, ideally\, can be connected with Pellizza’s masterpiece: the march portrayed in the Quarto Stato (The Fourth Estate)\, the manifesto of all struggles for the conquest of civil rights at the dawn of modern times. Sardinia experienced social tensions whose extent was certainly not second to what was taking place in the rest of the country. In 1906\, thirteen strikes were organised on the Island\, and Cagliari staged the notorious revolt of female cigar-makers: this event took place in the month of May\, concurrently with the lecture on sculpture held by Ballero. On that occasion\, the artist sharply addressed the theme of social function that art was called upon to play\, emphatically referring to the social message of works of art that openly revealed a political perspective. The sentiment of an entire epoch\, exemplified by the march of peasants and their absolute message of dignity and courage\, reached its peak with Pellizza and the heritage he passed down to Ballero\, namely the consistency of art with real life: the harbinger of other struggles for the defence of the working class. The seizure of factories by workers anticipated the so-called Biennio Rosso (a two-year period of intense social conflict) and recorded exhausting struggles in a period when the country was facing increasing industrialisation: these battles were immortalised by the masters of colour in their indelible “snapshots” of a country on the edge between tradition and modernity. \nThe exhibition also spotlights a twelve-minute narrative rich with archival footage\, produced by Storyville. The video traces the history of the Quarto Stato (The Fourth Estate)\, starting with its acquisition via a public subscription. On 17 January 1920\, a public call for tenders was launched to gather the necessary funds to purchase the painting\, which had remained the property of Pellizza’s heirs. The initial bid was set at fifty thousand Italian liras. That amount was not negotiable. Thanks to the gallery owner Lino Pesaro\, the enlightened leftist Milan City Board\, led by Mayor Emilio Caldara\, had the idea of an open call to raise awareness among locals regarding the ethical sense of the acquisition. The response of the Milanese community was resolute and unanimous. Businessmen\, shop-owners\, artists\, and individual citizens paid free shares\, according to their means\, in keeping with the feeling of a choral action. On 20 May 1920\, the sum due was gathered and The Fourth Estate became a public asset of the City of Milan. \nCatalogue published by Edizioni Ilisso\nwith texts by Gabriella Belli and Antonello Cuccu
URL:https://www.museoman.it/en/event/pellizza-e-ballero-la-divina-luce/
CATEGORIES:Current Exhibitions
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