At Rocca di Lonato del Garda retrospective of Mario Giacomelli, among the great photographers of the 20th century

From July 7 to October 29, 2023, the Sala del Capitano in the Visconti Venetian Fortress of Lonato del Garda, within the monumental complex of the Ugo Da Como Foundation, hosts the retrospective Mario Giacomelli, a retrospective. The Lonato del Garda Collection, curated by Filippo Maggia with the collaboration of theMario Giacomelli Archive, organized by the Municipal Administration of the City of Lonato del Garda in collaboration with the Ugo Da Como Foundation.

The retrospective exhibition dedicated to the photographic legacy of Mario Giacomelli (Senigallia 1925 - 2000), one of the greatest interpreters of 20th century Italian photography, presents 81 of the 101 photographs owned by the Municipality of Lonato del Garda representative of several of the famous series of Mario Giacomelli’s production, such as that of seminarians, landscapes immortalized from high altitude, and Scanno.

"Of this collection, some works serve as accomplished examples of the unique style that still distinguishes Giacomelli’s photography: the plastic cut and painterly composition of the 1955 image La fotomodella; the dazzling, almost fluorescent black and white emanating from the famous photograph of the Scanno child, the result of a long and reasoned wait; the young seminarians taken from theabove that seem to be suspended in the void, on a floor of which Giacomelli has erased almost all traces by sculpting the blackness of the subjects against the white background; the face of an elderly woman emerging at the base of an image where dark figures dance, made from two negatives, a photograph invented to represent ’the face of death; the slightly blurred child looking at the camera while keeping the little girl behind him in focus, thus forcing the viewer to switch from one perspective plane to another; a heavenly female face, with hinted shadows of seagulls accompanying it in a poetic, dreamlike flight, from the series on Caroline Branson from Spoon River; the contrasting and severe images from the series Presa di coscienza sulla natura from 1976-1984, rigorous metaphors of the pure and primitive relationship Giacomelli hopes for between man and nature,“ curator Maggia wrote in the catalog. ”A precious collection that of the Municipality of Lonato del Garda, a gift of inestimable value left by a unique and, still today, unrepeatable photographer."

“Giacomelli is great for having created a new and extraordinary photographic language, made of a highly contrasted black and white, surprisingly strong for a time when photography was expressed in polite shades of gray,” wrote Mario Giacomelli Archive director Katiuscia Biondi. “A language so unprecedented that it raised technical and existential questions, and was - at first - considered ’chock-full of errors.’ But those errors soon appeared to critics as disturbing revelations of ’pieces of the real’ - a real as never before, despite the Neorealism of those years.”

For info: www.fondazioneugodacomo.it

Hours: Daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Image: Mario Giacomelli. From the Series Io non ho mani che mi accarezzino il volto (1961-1963; gelatin silver salt print on paper. From the Mario Giacomelli Photographic Collection owned by the Municipality of Lonato del Garda (inv. no. 4453) ©Archive Mario Giacomelli

At Rocca di Lonato del Garda retrospective of Mario Giacomelli, among the great photographers of the 20th century

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