Exhibition reviews

Mark Manders, when writing with objects instead of words. What the Sandretto exhibition looks like

As a rule, we are accustomed to bring under the umbrella of conceptual art a varied catalog of artistic expressions in which instances related to the constructive process and speculative scheme that determine the work are predominant over the aesthet...
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Everything is serious if there is irony. What the exhibition at MAMbo in Bologna is like.

The biggest mistake one can make in making an exhibition of artworks that should have irony as its common thread is to explain where it lurks by overwhelming it with words and reflections. But, on the other hand, what to do? Irony is a "celibate mach...
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Hokusai in Pisa, many masterpieces and some uncertainty

The Hokusai exhibition that opened at Palazzo Blu in Pisa on Oct. 24, 2024, and will be open until Feb. 23, 2025, is now nearing its close. Once again, the patrician palace overlooking the Arno River has offered in the fall-winter period, a major exh...
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Bologna compares Guido Reni's two Atalantes. What the exhibition at the Pinacoteca Nazionale looks like.

There should be queues on Via delle Belle Arti, in front of the entrance to the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, which for two months has granted faculty to the city, to Italy, to everyone, d'admire displayed side by side the two versions of Guido Re...
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Inhabiting the home of one of the great masters of art. Alessandra Spranzi at Casa Morandi

Artists' house museums are precious places that are difficult to design because of the oxymoronic need to let visitors enter (with due security measures), a space that was originally private, to make traceable and legible the imprints of the creative...
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Roberto Matta, the avant-garde suspected of kitsch.

When one considers that the birth of American comics lasted, roughly, from 1933 to 1938, and peaked with the myth of Superman, it is not surprising that Roberto Matta's interest in comics was, so to speak, of the first hour. And on the other hand, it...
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An art of shadow and silence. What the exhibition on Raoul Dal Molin Ferenzona in Collesalvetti looks like.

More than fifty years have passed since Dario Durbè could still write that Raoul Dal Molin Ferenzona was an artist who was "unfortunately forgotten and difficult to reconstruct due to the lack of biographical news and documentation." It can be...
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Restless renaissance and viaticum padani, from Brescia to Ferrara

In recent decades, historians have declined some historical categories in the plural. Thus the monolithic and imperious Renaissance, with a capital letter, has begun to break down into multiple renaissances, where the adjective regionalist has gained...
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Ulvi Liegi between stain and impression in a painting that is an ode to color. The exhibition in Livorno

It is now more than 54 years since Giuliano Matteucci wrote that Ulvi Liegi 's painting is "now finally recognized by all as one of the first voices of current modern art." Yet despite the fact that it was one of the pivotal figures in the history of...
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Art is not just beauty: works are not passive. On the exhibition of works confiscated from the Mafia.

It has often been repeated, slavishly following a pure and forcibly utopian ideal, that art elevates and purifies the soul of the viewer lost in the world. But art has not been (and probably never will be) a mere site of that longed-for "beauty," or ...
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Michael Sweerts, from the vestiges of Rome to the shadows of the East.

He must have been quite a guy, this Sweerts. From a Flemish family ennobled by the textile trade, Andrea, G. De Marchi and Claudio Seccaroni recall today in the catalog of the exhibition, still running in Rome until Jan. 18 at the Accademia di San Lu...
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Art in the Ludovisi papacy, among the shortest of the seventeenth century. What the exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale looks like.

The most monumental altarpiece by Giovan Francesco Barbieri known as Guercino was commissioned to the Cento painter in 1621 by Pope Gregory XV, born Alessandro Ludovisi, for the head altar of the north aisle of St. Peter's Basilica, where in 1606 the...
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When art and poetry were twins. What the exhibition "Painting and Poetry" at the Borghese Gallery looks like.

It's hard to pay attention to the base when admiring Bernini'sApollo and Daphne , caught up in that marvel of marble, Apollo's running, Daphne's fingers becoming branches and laurel leaves, Daphne's legs becoming a trunk, the nymph's lightness, Berni...
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The extraordinary relevance of Giorgio Vasari, modern artist. What the Arezzo exhibition looks like

In a letter dated May 10, 1548, Annibal Caro expresses to Giorgio Vasari his desire to take possession of one of his works, suggesting that it would be better if the work were done with some haste: not so much because Annibal Caro was in a hurry (and...
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Vera Lutter, unique photographs that make the real ambiguous. What the exhibition at MAST in Bologna looks like.

That the aura of the work of art no longer derives from its uniqueness is a fact that has been acknowledged ever since Walter Benjamin, at the turn of the two world wars, published the famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproduc...
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The revolution of the circle in Marina Apollonio

The word "abstractionism," in the arts, is in danger of being a meaningless word. And not because, conversely, "figurative" makes sense. On the contrary. It is a confusion that came about with the avant-gardes who, having faith in the new, considered...
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