Ferrara, an exhibition on the great students of Roberto Longhi: Pasolini, Bassani, Testori

In Ferrara, the Ariostesa Library is hosting, from April 3 to June 24, 2023, the exhibition-dossier Art and Literature in the Name of Roberto Longhi. Bassani, Pasolini, Testori set up in the spaces of the Ariosto Room of the Library, and organized by Fondazione Ferrara Arte and the Art Museums Service in collaboration with the Libraries and Archives Service of the Municipality of Ferrara.

The starting point of the exhibition is the Ferrara of Cosmè Tura, Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de’ Roberti, the painters to whom Roberto Longhi in 1934 dedicated Officina Ferrarese, an essay written on the occasion of the exhibition held the previous year for the fourth centenary of Ludovico Ariosto’s death. In the same year, Longhi assumed the chair of medieval and modern art history at the University of Bologna and opened his course with the famous Moments of Bolognese and Emilian Painting, in which he traced the history of Emilian artistic civilization from the 14th century to Giorgio Morandi, whom he consecrated as “one of the best living painters in Italy.” Ferrara and Bologna, in their historical diversity, can be considered cultural variables of the “Padanìa,” a neologism coined by Longhi and widely taken up by his student Francesco Arcangeli to indicate the aesthetic dimension of the Padana artistic civilization, which from the Bologna of Morandi and the Ferrara of Tura extends to the Piedmont and Lombardy of the painters dear to Giovanni Testori, reaching its apex in the Milan of Caravaggio, rediscovered precisely by the Piedmontese critic. And in fact, to the Po Valley “cultural nation” also belong the authors on whom the exhibition intends to shed light: Roberto Longhi (Alba, 1890 - Florence, 1970), Giorgio Bassani (Bologna, 1916 - Rome, 2000), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Bologna, 1922 - Rome, 1975) and Giovanni Testori (Novate Milanese, 1923 - Milan, 1993), in fact, were born, matured, moved, acted and produced in this geographical and aesthetic-cultural area. The exhibition accompanies the visitor on a journey that, between Bologna and Ferrara, traces the years of the cultural formation of Bassani and Pasolini disciples of Longhi, ranging to the Milan of Testori and Caravaggio and the Rome of Pasolini, inspired by Longhi’s investigations on the painters of reality in Lombardy.

The result of painstaking archival research, letters, manuscripts, photographs, drawings and period films testify to the dense exchange between some of the protagonists of twentieth-century Italian cultural life, laying the groundwork for future research. Divided into ten thematic sections that exemplify the variety of connections between Longhi and his direct (Arcangeli, Pasolini, Bassani) and indirect (Testori) pupils, the exhibition includes a general presentation of the profile of the master and his pupils, whose points of contact with Longhi’s magisterium are considered, as well as their mutual biographical and intellectual relationships. Adequate prominence is given to insights into issues of social relevance such as the censorship to which Pasolini, Testori and indirectly Bassani were subjected, and to focuses of an artistic nature such as that on Francis Bacon, whose knowledge spread in the early 1960s, after the monographic exhibition in Turin (1962), and with whom Longhi’s three pupils were confronted in different ways. Visitors then have the opportunity to observe how Bassani and Pasolini reworked Longhi’s influence by reusing the medium of the artistic image in original ways, respectively through the recovery of paintings that the former chose to place on the covers of the first editions of his novels and through the numerous pictorial references in the latter’s film production.

The exhibition, accompanied by a catalog with essays by Vittorio Sgarbi, president of the Ferrara Arte Foundation, Francesca Bini (scholar of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics of the Visual Arts), Alessandro Gnocchi (Editor-in-chief of “Il Giornale”) and Mirna Bonazza (Head of U.O. Libraries of the Municipality of Ferrara), explores the biographical relationships and cultural exchanges between the three great authors of Italian literature with the master Roberto Longhi, whose role as a mentor is emphasized.

The exhibition opens Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Free admission

Image: Bassani converses with Pasolini in the editing room during the making of the film La rabbia (part.), 1963. Photo: Archivio Storico Luce

Ferrara, an exhibition on the great students of Roberto Longhi: Pasolini, Bassani, Testori

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.