Brothers on display. Massimiliano and Michelangelo Galliani prophets at home in Montecchio Emilia.

In Montecchio Emilia (Reggio Emilia), the Profeti in Patria - Cammini d’artista a Montecchio Emilia (Prophets in Homeland - Artist’s Ways in Montecchio Emilia) exhibition returns from November 6, 2021 to March 27, 2022, whose sixth edition will be dedicated to the brothers Massimiliano G alliani (Montecchio Emilia, 1983 - 2020) and Michelangelo Galliani (Montecchio Emilia, 1975). Inaugurated in 2015 and supported in 2021 also by the contribution of the Emilia Romagna Region, the Profeti in Patria project was strongly desired by the municipal administration to allow citizens to get to know and get in touch with artists working in the area.

The exhibition, curated by art critic Alberto Zanchetta, will take place inside the Medieval Castle and Casa Cavezzi, with a conspicuous selection of sculptures by Michelangelo Galliani and drawings, graphic and pictorial works by Massimiliano Galliani, who died prematurely in 2020. Some of Michelangelo Galliani’s sculptures will also be placed outdoors, in the symbolic places of Montecchio Emilia, thus creating a path that will connect the two exhibition venues. The title of the exhibition, Hybris, alludes to the natural predisposition of every artist to exceptionality and disproportionality, beyond pre-established rules, without constraints.

“The decision to dedicate the 2021/2022 edition of Prophets in the Fatherland to the two artists Massimiliano and Michelangelo Galliani, brothers in life but with paths in creative autonomy,” says Mayor Fausto Torelli, “was born already at the time of my beginning of my mandate. I had talked about it with both of them and the proposal was welcomed. Then the painful, tearing events. This union today takes on an even higher meaning that goes beyond artistic value and becomes life together that continues. On behalf of the Administration, I am happy and proud to host this event dedicated to them and I join the entire citizenry in this heartfelt and warm embrace.”

“Maximilian,” writes art critic Alberto Zanchetta, "relies mainly on the art of lapis. The serpentine line of the drawing is erratic but at the same time circular, destined to get lost and to recover endlessly; it happens in the water paths of the Life cycle and in the craquelures of The Roads of Time inspired by the masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci and Rogier van der Weyden. Like few other artists of his generation, Maximilian conceived of drawing as a seismograph of thought; he did not just go along with the chiaroscuro rit[m]o of the sign, he decided, if anything, to approximate and envelop the hatching so that the trompe-l’œil technique would correspond to a savory metalinguistic play. Thus was born the series disegno E matita in which the working tool concurs to legitimize the subjects, while in the next cycle, Attraverso, the lapis bursts onto the scene, ideally perforating the paper support. Not differently, Michelangelo performs an intimate reworking of the elements that crowd the gaze and memory, that is, he reactivates the aesthetic experience of the ’fragment.’ His sculptures are aesthetic syntheses - heads, torsos, legs - that achieve an evidence truer than the real, at once magnificent and terrifying. The manipulation of marble offers our gaze a metaphor/metamorphosis of nature and man that is mixed with alchemical and cosmogonic references. Michelangelo evokes processes of transformation that lead one to consider his sculptures as sublime[nal] bodies. Bodies that perhaps do not belong to this world, but rather to a modern mythology, or more likely to a new logic of myth."

Parallel to the Prophets at Home project, the Municipality of Montecchio Emilia has entered into an agreement with theCultural Association "ArtMacs," which was founded in Montecchio Emilia in December 2020 with the aim of protecting and spreading knowledge of Massimiliano Galliani’s artistic work, supporting the birth of the Massimiliano Galliani Award for Drawing under 35, dedicated to drawing and emerging visual research. Winner of the first edition-organized in partnership with the ArtVerona art fair-was the young Mexican artist Fernanda Carrillo, represented by A Pick Gallery of Turin. In addition to the prize-purchase awarded by the Association, the City committed to purchase an additional work by the artist and subsequently host a solo exhibition of her work at the exhibition spaces of Casa Cavezzi.

For all information, you can call +39 0522 861864/861861 or send an email to biblioteca@comune.montecchio-emilia.re.it.

Brothers on display. Massimiliano and Michelangelo Galliani prophets at home in Montecchio Emilia.

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