Dario Fo's paintings and sketches from the Grassi Collection on display in Milan

From Dec. 14, 2022 to Jan. 29, 2023, the Spazio Alda Merini - Casa delle Arti, in Milan, or the house museum dedicated to Alda Merini who passed away in 2009, will host the exhibition Dario Fo, Il Maestro dei Pennelli (Dario Fo, The Master of Paintbrushes), under the patronage of the City of Milan and a number of nonprofit associations, in collaboration with the Centro Europeo Teatro e Carcere (CETEC - Inside/Outside San Vittore) directed by Donatella Massimilla.

Paintings and theater sketches that Dario Fo made at Casa Grassi in Cesenatico belonging to the Grassi Collection will be on display.

Dario Fo was a guest several times in the San Vittore Prison, also invited by CETEC, and together with Franca Rame his civil commitment made him feel close to the people who inside a place of confinement find the strength of redemption, through the arts and theater, and build their social and labor reintegration. The people incarcerated at San Vittore also remember very well the performance that Dario Fo did, a few years ago, in the prison church on Christmas Day itself, with his famous monologue of St. Francis accompanied by the orchestra of child violinists, the Archistorts of Reggio Emilia.

“Dario Fo is a master who together with Franca Rame dedicated his life to art and the causes of the last,” said Donatella Massimilla of the European Theater and Prison Center. “Remembering the maestro in his many generous visits and performances in the San Vittore prison, brings me back to unforgettable moments, to emotions shared with the inmates and detainees, the whole staff, the management, in moments that have witnessed the work of CETEC in the years dedicated to recluse theater as those of a conviviality of artists, in a Free University of Theater. Merini herself would come to tell her story in the library of the women’s section accompanied by her friends. So our thanks go to Fabio Grassi for generously entrusting Spazio Alda Merini with her precious collection.”

The exhibition is also accompanied by a book by Fabio Grassi that contains photos, curiosities and a study of how the Nobel laureate imagined her theater, painting and designing sets and costumes, before bringing it to the stage. Paintings, stage sketches, and drawings that Dario Fo gave, over the years, to his friend Primo Grassi, mayor of Cesenatico. Excerpts of theatrical plots, tales of workers’ struggles, bombs and state massacres, defense of the weak and oppressed, building speculation, closing asylums, Rossini operas, the Chile of Allende and Victor Jara, the death of Pinelli.

The plot of the book accompanies the reader to re-examine the social and political battles waged by Dario Fo and Franca Rame through political theater with irony and determination, and contains stories and paintings related to theatrical techniques, geometries and harmonies, Greek masks and Sicilian songs, but also to Jannacci, Cochi and Renato, De Andrè, Carlin Petrini, the Cesenatico dolphinarium, and the last show-show that Fo created in 2016 precisely at the Primo Grassi Tourism Palace in Cesenatico.

Dario Fo's paintings and sketches from the Grassi Collection on display in Milan

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.