From Piero della Francesca to today: in Todi, the exhibition De Prospectiva Pingendi explores new scenarios in Italian painting

Scheduled in Todi (province of Perugia), from April 22 to July 1, is the exhibition De Prospectiva Pingendi. New Scenarios of Italian Painting, hosted on two prestigious venues: the Sala delle Pietre in Palazzo del Popolo, a thirteenth-century building that is home to the town hall and civic museum, and the Palazzo del Vignola, built in the sixteenth century, long the seat of the seminary of Todi, and named after the portal attributed to the great architect Jacopo Barozzi known as il Vignola (Vignola, 1507 - Rome, 1573). Ancient and contemporary therefore meet in an exhibition, curated by Massimo Mattioli, that is openly inspired by the famous treatise De prospectiva pingendi by Piero della Francesca (Borgo San Sepolcro, c. 1412 - 1492): the great Tuscan Renaissance painter, himself inspired by Leon Battista Alberti’s De pictura (Genoa, 1404 - Rome, 1472), had divided the approach to painting into three areas, namely drawing (how to paint individual figures), commensuratio (the arrangement of figures in space) and coloring.

Through the exhibition of fifteen Italian artists, either young or in the middle of their careers (Giuseppe Adamo, Antonio Bardino, Angelo Bellobono, Simone Berti, Thomas Braida, Danilo Buccella, Alessandro Cannistrà, Andrea Chiesi, Mario Consiglio, Laura Lambroni, Silvia Mei, Marco Neri, Gioacchino Pontrelli, Nicola Samorì, and Nicola Verlato), the exhibition aims to provide the public with insights into the new (or developing) modes of contemporary Italian painting. The aim is to offer a comprehensive look at the new trends: “from those who move from a citationism that they then revise with personal symbolism, to those who land on a new post-ideological surrealism, from those who challenge a naturalism devoid of any manner to those who arrive at a fully philosophical abstract synthesis,” as the curator points out.

“In the last decades of the last century,” in fact, Massimo Mattioli explains, “painting in Italy was still able to catalyze itself around groups or movements that had strong critical and market support, from Transavanguardia to Anacronismo to the Scuola di San Lorenzo. In more recent years, the practice of painting has not lost its grip on the national scene, but has relied on protagonists who were taking individual paths, achieving results that in many cases were very high, but not adequately recognized by the contemporary art system.” Among these artists determined to undertake their individual paths, the curator has selected authors who proposed personal, strong, innovative research, succeeding in establishing them in prestigious international scenarios (biennials, exhibitions in major Italian and international museums), as well as young artists who since their beginnings have made themselves known for the modernity, quality and originality of their proposals.

The works on display are about fifty, on a route that occupies more than three thousand square meters in the two spaces of the Hall of Stones in the Palazzo del Popolo (a large rectangular hall of three hundred square meters that in ancient times was destined for the meetings of the General Council of Todi, and that in the 1920s housed a municipal collection of stone artifacts, hence the name by which it is now known, and later an exhibition space) and the Palazzo del Vignola (where the main nucleus of the exhibition is located).

The exhibition is free admission. The catalog contains a text by Fabio De Chirico, an essay by Massimo Mattioli and critical texts by Daniele Capra and Anita Pepe. Media Partner Artslife. For information visit the City of Todi website, call 075 8956228, or email deprospectivapingendi@gmail.com.

Pictured: the exhibition venue of Sala delle Pietre (ph. Credit: Linea Light, which took care of the lighting)

From Piero della Francesca to today: in Todi, the exhibition De Prospectiva Pingendi explores new scenarios in Italian painting

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