Exhibition reviews

An intense journey among the great and forgotten of the 16th century in Ferrara. What the exhibition at the Palazzo dei Diamanti looks like

If we were to accompany Jacob Burckhardt on his visits to the galleries of Rome and listen to him as he pauses to describe the pieces that most and best captured his interest, we would most likely derive sharp adjectives from them, suitable for defin...
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Henri Cartier-Bresson, the decisive instant of the South

Henri Cartier-Bresson's travels in Italy are journeys, especially to the South, recounted in photographic "reportages" that have a vague ethnographic flavor. The tone with which the French photographer approaches our worlds is somewhat reminiscent of...
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Mongol Zurag: reimagining the art of resistance. What the Venice exhibition looks like

What might the art of resistance look like if the Marxian dream of revolution had collapsed and the neoliberal promise of salvation proved fraudulent? The group exhibition Mongol Zurag: The Art of Resistance, curated by Uranchimeg Tsultem, illuminate...
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A long, repetitive immersion in Munch's anguish. What the Milan exhibition looks like

It is true that Edvard Munch is one of the most anguished artists ever: he himself claimed that his suffering, anxiety and illness were so much a part of himself and his art that their destruction would also destroy his art, but from the exhibition t...
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Why Helen Frankenthaler's painting was "without rules." What the Florence exhibition looks like

The most poetic and coldest painting at the same time on display at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (through Jan. 26) in the exhibition Helen Frankenthaler. Painting Without Rules, is titled Mornings and dates from 1971. The American painter was 43 years...
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Actuality and inactuality of flags. Luca Bertolo and Flavio Favelli in Castelnuovo Magra

A white flag flies listlessly amidst the vines, hoisted on a flagpole guarded from above, from the tower of the Castle of the Bishops of Luni that gazes down on the village of Castelnuovo Magra and keeps an eye on those who flutter down on the plain ...
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Picasso was also a migrant. What the Milan exhibition looks like

The story of the Demoiselles d'Avignon, which is among the founding masterpieces of twentieth-century art, can be taken as a very eloquent example of the damage that, in the field of the arts, can be caused by the most boorish, most obtuse, most reac...
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Andrea Baboni celebrated in Correggio with a valuable and fascinating exhibition

Curated by Francesca Manzini and Francesca Baboni, the city of Correggio honors with an exhibition(Viaggio tra Otto e Novecento. The Andrea Baboni Collection: a creative journey between painting and collecting) its illustrious son Andrea Baboni, born...
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The skin of the chameleon and Bertozzi & Casoni's memento mori

New technologies, including those of ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence that seeks to simulate dialogue capabilities with a human interlocutor by giving the impression of exercising, precisely, a critical factor that makes the conversation credible...
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Like a trip to the French Midi: what the Matisse exhibition in Mestre is like.

Constructed like a journey is the fine exhibition that the MUVE-Candiani Cultural Center has dedicated to Henri Matisse, a journey to that "Midi" in which, as art historian André Chastel guessed, "French modern art" was born, which in that par...
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A Little Tour on the Grand Tour. What the exhibition at the Lia Museum in La Spezia is like.

Collecting ancient art also follows trends. Those who look at this world from the outside may find it hard to believe, but it is so, it has always been so, and there is no reason to believe that it will cease to be so. And although it often happens t...
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Is Ai Weiwei still a current artist? What the exhibition at Palazzo Fava in Bologna is like.

Ai Weiwei's exhibition is spread over the two floors of Palazzo Fava in Bologna. On the second floor is a varied selection of works by the Chinese artist: from the action of breaking an ancient Ming vase to another Ming vase with the Coca Cola logo p...
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Unlikely eulogy of Botero: that is, of the Botero we would like to see

The years in which Fernando Botero appeared in the art world, that is, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, were for Colombia marked by a social climate where violence was the order of the day (as, for that matter, is the case today with the domination...
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The walk in the sky. Correggio's prodigy in Parma in Lucio Rossi's photos.

Yes, to Correggio some of those pious monks of the Abbey of San Giovanni in Parma, in 1519, might well have advised him to depict an Ascension up there, in that white dome just finished "more romano": so much so that the still young painter, just out...
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Canova in Lucca: an exhibition on Lucca's neoclassicism... in disguise

Vittorio Sgarbi has not changed one iota the formula of the "exhibition in disguise" (so we could call it, taking up a definition that, moreover, is his), proposed for the second year in a row to the public of Lucca. Last year with an exhibition, suc...
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Note on Pino Pascali at the Prada Foundation

One of the most beautiful photographs of Pino Pascali was taken by Andrea Taverna in the artist's Roman studio in 1968: it depicts him as a rural shaman, dressed in raffia costumes and other objects. In fact, however, at its highest points, that shoo...
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