Apulia, a contemporary art review in the midst of trulli, with big names

Amid trulli, terraces and historic walls in Ceglie Messapica, Apulia, in the heart of the Itria Valley, contemporary artists are showing their gaze on the places, landscapes and cultural and anthropological heritage of the area with Nucré, a contemporary art exhibition that opens to the public Aug. 6 to Sept. 15. We are in the town that gave birth to Emilio Notte (Ceglie Messapica, Jan. 30, 1891 - Naples, July 7, 1982), one of the most important exponents of the Italian Futurist movement. Notte in 1977 donated a part of his personal collection to his Ceglie Messapica, today in the Castello Ducale, particularly in the rooms of the Pinacoteca named after the artist, 10 works are kept, which the public will finally be able to admire.

The Nucré project bears the signature of Rita Urso and Arechi Invernizzi ( Artopiagallery, Milan) and is divided into two exhibitions: the Castello Ducale - Pinacoteca Emilio Notte in Ceglie Messapica will be the venue for the group exhibition Frammento e ornamento, in dialogue with the works of Emilio Notte, curated by Roberto Lacarbonara; the Trullo Rubina, in contrada Menzella, will host the group exhibition Dove la terra incontra il cielo, a project curated by Giulia Bortoluzzi, dedicated to Rubina Ciraci.

Nucré, is a word made up of the dialectal terms “nu” + “cré” and represents a recurring vernacular formula of the area with which “a tomorrow” is generally indicated, an allusion and suggestion used in the form of hope, promise, destiny. The term refers to one of the most famous poems by Pietro Gatti, a Cegliese author among the most influential regional poets of the 20th century, to whom the Civic Library is dedicated.

Closely related to the work Oggetti (1969) by Emilio Notte, housed in the Castello Ducale - Pinacoteca Emilio Notte in Ceglie Messapica, the exhibition FRAMMENTO E ORNAMENTO, curated by Roberto Lacarbonara, includes the works of contemporary Italian and international artists, called upon to investigate the always partial, fragmentary, circumstantial character of the work, understood as an element of a lost or indefinite unity. Objects belongs to the series of “still lifes” and collages that Emilio Notte creates in the midst of a crisis of figure and composition: a laceration capable of privileging partiality over unity, detail over wholeness. With its irregular shape, the appearance of an ancient mosaic, the contours marked by the broken line, further accentuated by the use of zig-zag frames, this canvas-along with the coeval Fragment and Composition-shows a debt to the beloved Braque and Cubism, albeit with an awareness of gathering its fragments in light of new spatial needs. The works of the artists in the exhibition thus define a hypothesis of discovery, the unearthing of residual and discontinuous visual fragments, “quasi-archaeological” presences that reactivate imaginative signs of great evocative power. A suggestion that seems to be further strengthened by the memory of the precious iconographic and ornamental apparatuses that decorated the castle, richly frescoed in the 15th century by the Sanseverino family, traces of which are still visible on the walls of the adjacent “Pietro Gatti” Library.

The public will find on view works by Emanuele Becheri, Max Bill, T-Yong Chung, Gabriella Ciancimino, Benjamin Cohen, Antonio Corpora, Francesco Gennari, Giorgio Griffa, Franco Guerzoni, Jean-Baptiste Maitre, Vincenzo Marsiglia, Elizabeth McAlpine, Diego Miguel Mirabella, Davide Monaldi, Emilio Notte, Achille Perilli, and Markus Saile.

Open: Mon-Fri 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., 6-9 p.m.; Sat and Sun: 6-9 p.m. Free admission

Where the earth meets the sky

The project WHERE THE EARTH MEETS THE SKY, curated by Giulia Bortoluzzi, is proposed as a reflection on the relationship between the traditional agricultural vocation of the Trulli and the importance that observation and knowledge of nature, particularly the sky, have always characterized the work of the land. These ancient constructions, typical of the Apulian territory, are in fact linked to peasant origins as much in their architectural form as in a historical-anthropological sense - Trulli were originally built using materials obtained from the stripping of soil to make it more easily cultivable and were used to house farmers and animals. With their almost domed shape, the Trulli soar upward and often bear signs and symbols on the outside, belonging to different cultures (Christian, Jewish, pagan etc.), which refer to the knowledge of atmospheric regimes, the nature of the climate, and stargazing. The relationship between earth and sky emerges spontaneously in the encounter with the territory, and is observed both from the material point of view, in its architecture and craftsmanship, and from the metaphorical point of view, linked to cosmological and existential visions. With their works, the artists involved invite us to observe the architecture that hosts them and the surrounding landscape in new relationships capable of activating new meanings and sensations. The exhibition features works by Pamela Diamante, Elise Eeraerts , Andrea Francolino, Luigi Ghirri, Carlo Guaita, Bea McMahon, Niamh O’Malley, Fabio Roncato, and Martinelli Venezia.

“This project is a return home, to the womb in a kind of double movement. As it was for my mother and father who in the 1960s moved from Ceglie Messapica to Milan and there transformed their lives in meeting and frequenting assiduously with the artists of the time. But who returned every year in the summer to bring back to their places of origin the seeds of their own change and experience. But these are also the places where the art of Emilio Notte originated, the futurist artist to whom the Civic Art Gallery is dedicated and from whose confrontation the exhibition ”Fragment and Ornament" was born, a collective that opens to the exchange between authors of different generations in dialogue with a work of the Cegliese master. An initiative that we believe serves to bring attention back to the research of one of the greatest interpreters of 20th century Italian painting.

The photos, paintings, sculptures, and videos of the exhibition Dove la terra incontra il cielo (Where the earth meets the sky ) dialogue spontaneously with the archetypal simplicity of the architecture of the trullo, its primary form and its paradoxical grandeur made of poor stones gathered in the fields, with the bright colors of the earth and plants and the intense blue of the sky," comments Rita Urso of Artopiagallery, Milan, creator of Nucré together with Arechi Invernizzi.

Pictured: work by Fabio Roncato at Trullo Rubina

Apulia, a contemporary art review in the midst of trulli, with big names

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