From Lviv to Carrara Academy, two sculpted angels bring message of peace

From the National Gallery of Art in Lviv two works, two wooden sculptures by Franciszek Oledzki (Lviv, c. 1745 - 1792), arrive on loan to theCarrara Academy in Bergamo to bring a message of peace.

The sculptures depict two angels that, in addition to being significant testimonies of the artist’s style and production, tell the story of two works that escaped the destruction that war brings. Two angels as messengers of light and at the same time heavenly warriors in the words of Taras Voznyak, director Lviv National Gallery of Art.

The preservation of art-historical heritage during conflicts as well as the universal and peaceful value of art and culture are the basis of Lviv Here. The Culture of Peace, the exhibition project to be hosted by the Carrara Academy from April 14 to June 4, 2023, which has the patronage of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, MUR Ministry of University and Research, Embassy of Italy Kiev, Embassy of Ukraine in the Republic of Italy, and the Italian Cultural Institute in Kiev. Lviv here intends to be an opportunity to reaffirm not only the closeness to the Ukrainian people, but also the role of culture as a tool of knowledge, exchange, solidarity and international cooperation. The collaboration between the two museums began as early as 2022 when Accademia Carrara gave concrete support in the operations to secure the National Art Gallery collection, made necessary by the outbreak of the conflict.

“The fundamental thing for me is that culture must overcome all wars between nations. The worst thing about wars is the prohibition of the culture of the other”: this is one of the thoughts of Edgar Morin, a centenarian French philosopher and sociologist who, in a video made by Accademia Carrara for Lviv here. Culture of Peace, thanks to Mauro Ceruti, brings his message towards peace and the need to support “the universality of culture, the truth that culture gives to life, the importance that all this is without borders because every national culture has a universal value for all peoples, for the whole world.” Edgar Morin was born in Paris in 1921 to a Jewish family with Livorno roots. He is considered one of the great thinkers of our time, known in particular for his transdisciplinary approach. For many years a lecturer at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and Centre national de la recherche scientifique, he recently published From War to War. From 1940 to the Invaded Ukraine, an essay that starts from personal experience during World War II and serves to understand the urgency of striving for peace while avoiding ever greater tragedies.

Accademia Carrara has also decided to turn Leopolis here into concrete actions, on the one hand through support with a fundraiser for Cesvi, a Bergamo-based association among the first to intervene in Ukraine since the outbreak of war. The fundraiser is for the many projects supporting the Ukrainian population, in particular Child Safe Space for psychosocial help for adults and children. The invitation to donate is free and simple: just frame a QR code. With the support of Caritas, Accademia Carrara confirms its closeness to the Ukrainian community present in the city and in our country. Also thanks to the collaboration with Assessorato Servizi Sociali Comune di Bergamo, Cooperativa Ruah and Associazione Zlaghoda,free admission is offeredto Ukrainian citizens with guided tours.

“From February 2022 to the present, Bergamo and Ukrainian cities have become particularly close. Indeed, our city is giving back some of the solidarity it had gathered throughout Europe and the world during the spring of 2020: first the twinning and reconstruction of kindergartens in Bucha, the city symbolic of the Russian occupation and massacre of civilians, then the increasingly fruitful and close relations with Lviv. I was a guest of Mayor Andrij Sadovyj last summer and got to know, more closely, the tragedy that struck the Ukrainian people; Sadovij was in turn our guest in Bergamo at the last ANCI assembly last November,” stressed Giorgio Gori, mayor of Bergamo and president of the Accademia Carrara Foundation. “Not only that, Accademia Carrara has supported the Lviv Gallery in preserving and securing the works during wartime. Lviv here, therefore, is part of an articulated path of building particularly meaningful and symbolic international relations: post-pandemic Bergamo is an even more open, more international and dynamic city, perhaps because during the covid crisis we understood how difficult it is to be isolated, alone. A big thank you to the tireless efforts of CESVI, a foundation from Bergamo that was the first among the European ones to enter Ukraine last spring, a fact that made it possible to forge a friendship between Bergamo and Ukraine made of concrete actions.”

“Hosting two wooden sculptures from the National Gallery of Art in Lviv is a concrete gesture of solidarity between museums and of closeness to the Ukrainian people,” said Nadia Ghisalberti, Bergamo City Councilor for Culture. “Exhibiting them and making them known to our public is a way to remember that the war in Ukraine has also caused immense damage to the artistic heritage, an expression of the history and culture of its people. The cruelty of this conflict was also expressed in the destruction of cultural property, which the Hague Convention of 1924 commits to protect even in war because it is the heritage of all Humanity.”

“Accademia Carrara’s collaboration with the Ukrainian National Museum in Lviv dates back to last year when we began a dialogue between museums related to the issues of preservation of works of art in wartime and continues today with the presence in Bergamo of two sculptural works by theartist Franciszek Oledzki that belong to the collection of the Lviv museum, demonstrating that, although in the particularly difficult climate experienced by the Ukrainian country, culture remains a solid ground for knowledge, exchange and cooperation,” commented Accademia Carrara director Maria Cristina Rodeschini. “We are prepared as of now to continue our collaboration with the Lviv museum under the sign of reciprocity, hopefully soon, when the war is over. Art can play a fundamental role as a messenger of peace, and Accademia Carrara with Lviv here is a spokesman for this important message.”

“The figures of the angels, messengers of light and at the same time celestial warriors, were not chosen at random to be exhibited at Accademia Carrara, an institution established at the time of their creation. They have a special mission: to help Ukrainians better understand themselves through Italian artistic heritage, and to help Italians feel in a new way thanks to such distant yet close plastic forms of Ukraine,” said Lviv National Art Gallery Director Taras Voznyak. “This loan is especially important considering the war unleashed by Russia on the territory of sovereign and independent Ukraine.”

“We are grateful to Accademia Carrara for choosing to stand with us to support the Ukrainian people, who have been resisting and fighting an atrocious war for over a year that is reaping victims and sowing pain,” concluded Gloria Zavatta, Cesvi president. “We are convinced that art is an extremely powerful tool to awaken consciences, read reality and give a sign of hope for a peace that we all hope for. The support of such a prestigious institution as the Accademia Carrara makes us proud and acquires an even stronger meaning because it comes from Bergamo, the city where CESVI was born and to which it has been close in these difficult years because of the pandemic, and which has forged a special and painful bond with Ukraine, in particular the city of Buča that has become emblematic of the bloody conflict in Ukraine. We at CESVI have never given up and continue with our projects to stand by the Ukrainian people to rebuild not only what was destroyed in the cities and small towns, but also to ’rebuild the lives’ of people and contribute to the rebirth of a great country.”

From Lviv to Carrara Academy, two sculpted angels bring message of peace

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