Contemporary sacred art is on display in Ascoli Piceno.

The City of Ascoli Piceno, in collaboration with the John Paul II Youth Foundation and with the fundamental contribution of the Ascoli Reti Gas Company, presents the exhibition L’Arte che protegge. Contemporary Painting and the Sacred, a survey of the Italian panorama of contemporary sacred art, curated by Camillo Langone. It runs from December 7, 2018 to January 13, 2019 in the rooms of the Palazzo dei Capitani del Popolo.

For centuries the Church has been marked by the fraternal relationship between art and liturgy, between art and faith: then came Modernity, and with it secularization, this bond was broken and today it becomes difficult to explain sacred art. In the secular time when the Church commissions far less than in the past, and with far less theological rigor, often without demanding respect for even the most basic Catholic iconographic criteria, what do artists nevertheless drawn to the sacred produce? Finally, what can art offer to those who continue to seek the transcendent? The exhibition The Art That Protects. Contemporary Painting and the Sacred was created in response to these questions while also providing a kind of state of sacred art in Italy. “Regardless of the motives that drive artists to produce it,” says Camillo Langone, “therefore, both examples of official sacred art, drawn from the not much sacred art commissioned by religious institutions today, and examples of sacred art made out of private devotion, of the author or of the eventual commissioner, and examples of sacred art without an immediate religious purpose but arising from the confrontation, perhaps only formal in appearance yet always open to further valences, with the Madonnas and Saints of the Golden Ages are on display.” Despite the cultural climate, confrontation with the sacred is by no means uncommon in the works of contemporary artists, with a transcendental tension that is often underestimated and therefore needs to be highlighted.

Thirty-two artists from various generations active in the Italian painting scene are on display, spanning a half-century-long span from Ercole Pignatelli (born 1935) to Ilaria Del Monte who is from ’85. The sphere favored by all the artists is the figurative one, within which more realistic and more stylized representations find their place. These range from reinterpretations of the Stories of the Saints with Stefano Di Stasio ’s La Strada del Santo in which a lost St. Francis in the company of the wolf moves against a menacing metropolitan backdrop, to nativity scenes, recreated by Vanni Cuoghi as a pocket set, or in the paintings by Letizia Fornasieri and Giulia Huober, through Madonnas enriched by a citationism at times pop, like Fulvia Mendini’s triptych Madonnina del vetro, Mad onnina della passione, Madonnina del cardellino, at times surrealist like Giuliano Guatta ’s Regina Pacis Mundi Spes or inspired by the 15th-century tradition like Mary’s finger, an oil painting by Federico Guida.

Some of the works on display were already existing, others were created for the occasion. Also specially created was the only sculpture, molded in terracotta by Piceno sculptor Paolo Annibali, who is used to dealing with the sacred. The exhibition, with free admission, opens from Dec. 7, 2018 to Jan. 13, 2019. For all information you can visit www.comuneap.gov.it.

“Special thanks go to our Main Sponsor Ascoli Reti Gas, without whose support our city would not have been able to host such a prestigious exhibition,” said Mayor Guido Castelli. “Ascoli has always been recognized, both in the Marche region and throughout central Italy, as one of the most sensitive cities in the area of cultural production,” he continued. “This is why we maintain a constant commitment to offer citizens, visitors and artists the opportunity to see or display works of art on display in the most representative halls of the municipality.”

Contemporary sacred art is on display in Ascoli Piceno.

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