Andrea Chisesi's paintings paying homage to Gabriele D'Annunzio at the Vittoriale degli Italiani

From September 27, 2020, to March 13, 2021, Andrea Chisesi ’s (Rome, 1972) homage to Gabriele D’Annunzio (Pescara, 1863 - Gardone Riviera, 1938) will be staged at the Vittoriale degli Italiani in Gardone Riviera: the Milanese artist, Roman by birth, thus returns to measure himself with the Vate only a month after the closing of the exhibition Pietre della memoria. A Tribute to the Versiliana’s Kinsman. This time, Chisesi’s works will be on display in D’Annunzio’s own home overlooking Lake Garda, a house-museum visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. The exhibition, titled Tempora Vatis, curated by Marcella Damigella and set up in the Villa Mirabella, aims to be a hymn to d’Annunzi’s “inimitable life.”

On display is a new series of works, created in Chisesi’s Syracuse studio, an old late 19th-century hotel remodeled in the Fascist era, where the artist found his sources of inspiration: the walls of the ground floor, in fact, had been covered with wallpaper from the D’Annunzian era and hid old newspapers from 1920 on the back, which the artist began to tear, paste and superimpose; they were shreds of society news, appropriately used as evidence of a time now past, but not forgotten. Taking advantage of the temporal link between the fragments of print and d’Annunzio’s life, Andrea Chisesi decided to tell the story of the seasons of the Vate’s life in this way, transposing the famous photographs of the most significant moments of his life, including his private ones, onto canvases prepared with his trademark “matrem,” Chisesi’s trademark (white-colored brushstrokes that recall the namesake flower of the asteraceae), and with which he shows us how extraordinary Gabriele D’Annunzio’s lifestyle was.

The exhibition displays a total of 68 works, including sketches, drawings and works on canvas, in an intimate itinerary specially designed for Villa Mirabella. By his own precise will, Chisesi has divided the exhibition into four main parts, in a path with the works arranged on the walls in a clockwise direction, tracing the seasons of the year, indicated in Latin, a language very dear to the Vate. The sections are Fons (portraits of Gabriele D’Annunzio from his adolescence to 1920), Aestas (heroes, myths and characters dear to him, his passions for ships, airplanes, cars), Arbores (women, the allegory of the Faun, myths and passions from Dante to Michelangelo), Hiems (portraits of his closest friends and the icons that accompanied him, including St. Sebastian, St. Catherine of Siena and St. Francis). Completing the Tempora Vatis exhibition is the so-called “Secret Room,” a sort of wunderkammer, but with red lights, full of surprises. In addition to another series of works, an installation consisting of small doors, complete with handle and lock, will be placed in this space. Almost as if they were miniature rooms, behind each door will be a small-scale “fusion on paper,” explicitly dedicated to love rituals and visible only through the keyhole.

That of the “secret room” will, moreover, be the only opportunity to be able to see those explicit images, since they will not be in the exhibition catalog. And in any case, at the end of the exhibition tour, all the images, both those “ordered” according to the seasons and those sneak peeks, will turn out to be photograms of an over-the-top existence that earned D’Annunzio the nickname “Imaginific.”

Completing the exhibition is a catalog with texts by the president of the Vittoriale degli Italiani, Giordano Bruno Guerri, and the curator, Marcella Damigella. In addition to hard copy, the catalog will be available at the exhibition in a digital version that can be downloaded to one’s smartphone. The exhibition will open daily (excluding all Mondays in November, December, January, February and on Dec. 24 - 25 and Jan. 1) from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. (until Oct. 4) and from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. (from Oct. 5 to March 13). Admission included in the ticket to the Vittoriale. Info at www.vittoriale.it.

Image: Andrea Chisesi, D’Annunzio on Horseback (2020; cast on canvas, 180 x 152 cm)

Andrea Chisesi's paintings paying homage to Gabriele D'Annunzio at the Vittoriale degli Italiani

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