Cadore celebrates Masi Simonetti and the Dolomites with a large, widespread exhibition

Fifty years after the death of painter Masi Simonetti (Zoppè di Cadore, Belluno, 1903 - Paris, 1969) and on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the inclusion of the Dolomites in UNESCO, in the Palace of the Magnifica Comunità of Cadore in Pieve di Cad ore and in the Exhibition Hall of Zoppé di Cadore, the artist’s hometown, the exhibition Masi Simonetti (1969 - 2019) will be open to the public from August 3 to September 15, 2019. Mountains and Mountaineers.

The exhibition aims to analyze the artist’s relationship with themountain environment and present the Dolomites in its various aspects. There will be 68 works on display, from public and private collections: through these paintings, the change in the landscape and lifestyles of the mountaineer that occurred drastically in the last century will be told.

Masi Simonetti has always been profoundly linked to his mountaineering origins, expressing narratives of rural life in his works since his beginnings in the 1920s. Refining pictorial quality, he has produced a series of critical works on the changing relationship between man and mountain as a result of modernity, which has caused profound transformations on local tradition. The exhibitions make it possible to learn about a broad artistic production, in which some unpublished works are also included, delving into the painter’s graphic quality and the social dynamics of the twentieth century that transformed local reality. In his last period, between 1953 and 1965, the artist stayed longer in Zoppè di Cadore and returned to figuration after abstractionism: in his works he thus tackles landscape themes, genre scenes, man, masks, and Christs, and through these paintings denounces the loss of traditional values by the mountain people, the tragic rupture of the profound relationship with the surrounding nature, and anticipates the need for protection of the mountain heritage.

The exhibition in Pieve di Cadore will focus on works related to the mountains and their context, from his early youthful beginnings to his latest creations, in which the painter demonstrates an accurate study of the Belluno Dolomites and the landscape, from the valley floor to the mountain ridges. For Masi, the mountain is a synthesis of physical, natural and spiritual qualities, an element that links him to his social and cultural roots. There are 35 works on display and they are representative of the painter’s entire production, from 1920 to 1968.

The Zoppè di Cadore exhibition presents 33 works where one can perceive the drastic change in the customs and habits of the mountain dwellers during the 20th century. In his early paintings, he makes slides of the time, with the shepherds of Zoppè immortalized in traditional activities; later he captures the distortion of the values of the mountain man, the abandonment of tradition and cultural peculiarities. The artist makes a fierce critique of this change.

Hours: Pieve di Cadore| Palace of the Magnificent Community of Cadore
August 3-September 14, 2019
Daily from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Zoppè di Cadore| Exhibition Hall
August 4-September 14, 2019
Daily from 3 to 6:30 p.m.
Free admission.

Image: Masi Simonetti, Il Pelmo (1929, oil on cardboard, 17.5 x 25 cm; Belluno, Museo Civico)

Cadore celebrates Masi Simonetti and the Dolomites with a large, widespread exhibition

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