Eccentrics and loners on display in Sutri. Among the leading painters, Wainer Vaccari

Until Nov. 19, 2022, the Palazzo Doebbing Museum in Sutri is hosting the exhibition Eccentrici e solitari, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi; a Contemplazioni project realized thanks to the support of Intesa Sanpaolo.

It is the precious Etruscan sculpture of San Gimignano, among the most important archaeological discoveries in recent years, that is the protagonist of the exhibition, imagined here in dialogue with the famous Ephebus of Sutri. A bronze votive statuette found in 2010 during some renovation work on a private building near the Fosci stream, among the hills that descend from San Gimignano toward Valdelsa.

The exhibition path kicks off with three painters who make their art a contemporary mythology. Wainer Vaccari ’s (Modena, 1949) connection with Nordic culture gives life to landscapes and situations that resemble still-images of ancient legends, dressed in modern clothing. The characters are mad heroes, serious and focused, darkly ironic. Vaccari’s myth of the north dialogues with the Greco-Latin myth to which the works of Adriano Fida (Reggio Calabria, 1978) look. His protagonists are muses and gods, who lose none of their archaic mystery: like the oracle of Delphi, Fida neither tells nor conceals, but hints through unresolved symbols. The works of Lorenzo Tornabuoni (Rome, 1934 - 2004) also refer to myth, not to imitate it, but to create it.

The search for identity does not take place on the surface, but involves deep, subterranean explorations. Descending the stairs of Palazzo Doebbing, the visitor will find in the basement a gallery of probing portraits of the human soul. Deformed and upside-down faces, like those photographed by Alessandra Mattè (Milan, 1978), disturbing and intriguing. Captured in their everyday simplicity, and for this reason authentic, like those of Stefano Maffessanti (Lovere, 1975), the portraits and self-portraits of Federico Maria Sardelli (Livorno, 1963), are introspective and disenchanted: casts of the self, so sharp that they recall etchings on metal plates for etching, another technique used by Sardelli. And then down, toward the darkness of the crypt, one encounters the luminous blackness of Alessandra Maxaculi (Rome, 1983). Works that seek form by surpassing it, in the abstract realm of ideas that is, in fact, the primary source of every figure. Even nature will not be able to help but look within, to discover the images that emerge from the darkness.

On the second floor are the works of photographer-poet Vittorio Pescatori (Milan, 1937 - 2019), who leads the viewer into a psychological, twilight dimension. His shots are measured, elegant, creative, nostalgic.

Striking through his powerful expressive charge is Fortunato Duranti (Montefortino, 1787 - 1863), a visionary, eccentric and solitary artist. Enclosed in his Montefortino, Duranti drew with obsession and torment: he depicted sibyls and madonnas, griffins and philosophers, saints and warriors. From his 19th-century visions we move on to the contemporary visions of Alessandra Mantovani and Eleonora Barbareschi (AMeBE). Here Italian design shows that it knows how to combine tradition and experimentation, through an irreverent irony that fascinates and petrifies the observer. Like the Medusa of the Greek myth, transformed into a mirror. Mirrors of the soul, on the other hand, are the portraits of Massimo Rao (San Salvatore Telesino, 1950 - San Venanzo, 1996), characterized by an earthly sacredness. His faces allude to something we think we know, but which does not exist. He who, on the contrary, transforms visions into reality is Gaetano Pesce (La Spezia, 1939). In the heart of Palazzo Doebbing, in the heart of Sutri, and in the heart of Italy, New York creations are exhibited here, which amaze the visitor with their disproportions.

In the loggia, the inner visions of Giovanni di Carpegna (Rome, 1966). An unexpected space, transformed into a living, organic body. Living and experienced ceramics, presences and memories of a Rome that returns precious, ordered within his engravings. Going up to the second floor, artists interested in the dreamlike and perturbing component of reality are exhibited. Starting with Grazia Cucco (Amelia, 1965). With her surrealism that is never contrived, always spontaneous, populated by myriad creatures that intertwine with the textures of nature, revealing its vices and virtues. Peasants and insects, flowers and fruits, nuns and animals are visions of the unconscious, its fantasies and disturbances. The expressionism of the kaleidoscopic subjects of Giannetto Fieschi (Zogno, 1921 - Genoa, 2010) also delves into the psyche, and searches beneath the layers of everyday experiences for universal archetypes. Alongside are the works of Domenico Rambelli (Faenza, 1886 - Rome, 1972), perhaps the leading monumental author of the 1920s between Viareggio, Brisighella and Lugo. On display are drawings and sculptures that were born in the Fascist period but did not succumb with it, and retained even in the small a monumental charge, testifying to an ability to synthesize on the borders of abstraction. The path of eccentrics and loners closes with Gianfilippo Usellini (Milan, 1903 - Arona, 1971) and his metaphysical epiphanies. Contemporary fables full of arcana, masks, and metaphors invite us to go beyond appearances, in search of the angels and demons hiding inside each of us.

At this link you can see a video dedicated to Wainer Vaccari with the voice of Vittorio Sgarbi. Of him Sgarbi writes: “Wainer Vaccari, from Modena, is a wonderful and extraordinary pure painter. Roughly my age, he has now reached artistic maturity: maturity of a dreamer, of an inventor of spaces and places where strange people move, in search of something lost, but with a fascination and drag that is unmatched in the painting of our time.”

For info: www.contemplazioni.it

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Eccentrics and loners on display in Sutri. Among the leading painters, Wainer Vaccari

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