A major exhibition in Città di Castello on blackness in the works of 20th century artists

From April 15 to August 28, 2022, the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco in Città di Castello will host the exhibition La luce del nero curated by Bruno Corà.

The exhibition is produced under the Creative Europe 2020 program with the Beam Up (Blind Engagement In Accessible Museum Projects 2020-2023) project. In addition to the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri and Atlante Servizi Culturali, the Fondazione Istituto dei Ciechi di Milano for all aspects related to visual impairment; The Glucksman - museum of contemporary art on the campus of the University of Cork (Ireland); and MSU Muzej Suvremene Umjetnosti - Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb - for the museum sector have also collaborated on the exhibition as partners. In fact, The Light of Black comes from the European project reserved forcontemporary art and visual impairment.

The exhibition aims to offer a perceptual experience of black to the public of both the sighted and the visually impaired, sometimes providing mimetic examples (as in the case of Burri) and, in others, forms, materials and techniques used by the artists. Indeed, the chosen theme is blackness, which from darkness, absence, becomes color again. As Burri’s works highlight, but also those of many great artists of the 20th century.

As the curator points out, black between the late Middle Ages and the 17th century lost its status as color. As was to be expected, it was the artists who reconnected to black its chromatic value, and in particular, among them, the action of Kazimir Malevič, a leading exponent of the Russian Suprematist current and author of the famous Black Square on a White Ground (1915), a work recalled in this exhibition by means of a print reproducing its image, appears essential.

Among the artists of the twentieth century, after World War II, Burri is the artist who has used black more than any other in his works, especially with increasing intensity from the 1970s-1980s, even going so far as to paint totally black even the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco in Città di Castello, industrial buildings that have become museum venues for his great painting cycles. Along with Burri, artists documented in the exhibition, such as Agnetti, Castellani, Fontana, Hartung, Kounellis, Morris, Nevelson, Parmiggiani, Schifano and Tàpies, also created works elaborated with black. Each with different modes, intentions and valences. Finally, under the banner of blackness and caecitas is also addressed the feeling of the poets to signify the inner gaze of psychic and poetic “clairvoyance” as opposed to the physical.

For info: http://www.fondazioneburri.org

Image: Alberto Burri, Combustion Wood, detail (1955; wood, vinavil, combustion on canvas; 88.5 x 160 cm)

A major exhibition in Città di Castello on blackness in the works of 20th century artists

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