From Africa to Liguria: Gianni Carrea and Enrico Merli at the Galata Museo del Mare in Genoa

An exhibition of two Ligurian figurative painters, between the colors of the Savannah and the enchantment of Genoa’s seascapes and hills. From July 2 to July 18, the auditorium of the Galata Museo del Mare (calata de Mari 1) will host Gianni Carrea and Enrico Merli - Paintings, curated by Stefano Bigazzi and on view in the Exhibition Gallery. Organized by Pietro Bellantone of EventidAmare, the exhibition is produced in collaboration with Mu.MA, Promotori Musei del Mare, Cooperativa Solidarietà e Lavoro, Costa Edutainment and Banca Carige, and also has the patronage of the Liguria Region, Genoa Metropolitan City, Genoa City Council and Genoa Chamber of Commerce.

Gianni Carrea and Enrico Merli - Paintings consists of fifty paintings by the two Ligurian figurative artists that, among expressive colors, signs and sensations, tell intertwining stories, sacrifices and feelings. “Gianni Carrea’s painting,” says Pietro Bellantone, president of EventidAmare, “forces one to meditate on the doubts it manages to raise, virtuously highlighting a deepening of the different cultures present in Africa. Enrico Merli, on the other hand, mainly portrays Liguria, its sea and faces, people from different perspectives, creating moments of absolute emotion.”

“For Mu.MA, it is a great pleasure to host the paintings of Gianni Carrea and Enrico Merli,” continues Nicoletta Viziano, president of Mu.MA, Istituzione Musei del Mare e delle Migrazioni, “an art that excites and induces reflection, fifty realistic paintings, people, animals, landscapes and sea. A Ligurian sea hidden by pines and a sea of cranes in the industrial port.”

Gianni Carrea is a hyperrealist figurative painter who lives and works in Genoa, particularly interested in images of people and animals from the Savannah, where he has traveled more than a hundred times, enhancing explorations and the relationship with other cultures and civilizations with great realism. Instead, “Enrico Merli’s realistic and figurative gaze,” adds Ilaria Cavo, the Liguria Region’s councillor for Culture, “is focused, principally, on Genoa and Liguria, on the many fascinating landscape views, whose lights and colors he knows how to capture well, creating suggestions and emotions in which the presence of people is not a façade, but a living reality, a testimony.” Two interpretations of the world and its diversity that engage, make people reflect and invite them to learn more about it. “Gianni Carrea and Enrico Merli - Paintings is an exhibition of contemporary art of great interest,” points out Barbara Grosso, councillor for Cultural Policies of the Municipality of Genoa, “which combines the detailed representation of people and animals of the African continent with the palette of Mediterranean colors, which paints and colors our Genoa, our Liguria.”

Stefano Bigazzi, curator of the exhibition, further observes, "Luminous and profound, Gianni Carrea’s painting moves the emotions and feelings that rest on the backdrops of consciousness. It is art that makes one think, induces reflection, poses questions, religious and humanistic at the same time, and is expressed in a cultural and anthropological exploration ofAfrica.

Enrico Merli describes the Ligurian sea seen from the coast, beautiful and difficult, just as it is hidden at times by pines or shrubs and the barren mountains, the uninhabited villages, the harbor from the cranes soaring like crosses from a cemetery of merchants and sailors. Human, natural and man-made landscapes shrouded in silence."

For all information you can visit the official Galata Museo del Mare website.

Pictured: Enrico Merli, Vista (2020), oil on canvas, cm. 40x50

From Africa to Liguria: Gianni Carrea and Enrico Merli at the Galata Museo del Mare in Genoa

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