At the Fortress of Bard, an exhibition reflects on the tragic consequences of war

The Cannon Rooms of the Fortress of Bard in the Aosta Valley will host the exhibition Napoléon from March 11 to June 5, 2022. Andrea and Paolo Ventura. The figure of Napoleon, life inside his garrisons, and the historical connection with the Fortress of Bard first placed under siege, then defeated and later razed to the ground are common themes from which the two-voice reflection of brothers Andrea and Paolo Ventura, artists and photographers, starts.

Andrea Ventura presents Epidemics of Nostalgia (2021), a series of thirteen acrylic color works on paper of varying sizes that addresses the theme of narcolepsy, a phenomenon with characteristics of nostalgia from one’s home or homeland, which was widespread in Napoleon’s armies engaged on the European fronts in the early 19th century. Paolo Ventura, on the other hand, was inspired by the siege of the Fortress of Bard, which took place in May 1800 by French troops, to create a series of eleven unpublished works.

Each with his own language (Andrea is a painter, Paolo is a photographer), the two artists reread the Napoleonic myth of the great battles and the great army that fought them. Both drew on war stories told in their families and, each through their own sensibility, offer a personal narrative of these events: the protagonists are the soldiers, but also the artists themselves.

Through this project, the Fortress of Bard intends to open a reflection on the tragic consequences of conflicts, which mark the lives of entire generations yesterday and today.

“At the moment when we imagined creating at the Fortress of Bard an exhibition dedicated to Andrea and Paolo Ventura, as an extreme cry of denunciation against the madness of war, never would we have thought that war could come so close to us, with yet another front,” commented Forte di Bard President Ornella Badery. “It is very difficult to find the words, but we trust that the moment is opportune, once again, to denounce the horrors, physical and psychological, that war produces and repudiate this tool as an element of conflict resolution.”

For info: www.fortedibard.it

Hours: Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Image: Andrea Ventura, Epidemic of Nostalgia (2021; acrylics on paper, 96 x 160 cm)

At the Fortress of Bard, an exhibition reflects on the tragic consequences of war

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