In Mantua, 100 artists to celebrate Fellini's 100th birthday

In the year of the celebrations for the centenary of Federico Fellini’s birth, the Francesco Gonzaga Diocesan Museum in Mantua is hosting, until October 25, the group exhibition 100 X 100 Fellini, sponsored by the City of Mantua: the exhibition isa tribute to the master of Italian and world cinema, through 100 unpublished works of art created by 50 Italian and international artists, invited by curators Francesca Bianucci and Chiara Cinelli to pay tribute, according to their own sensitivity and expressiveness, to Fellini’s imagery and its archetypes.

“It may seem inappropriate, almost an encroachment, for a Museum such as this one to deal with cinema,” says Monsignor Roberto Brunelli, Director of the Museum, “albeit to celebrate a recognized genius such as Federico Fellini. In fact, it is not at all inappropriate, for at least two good reasons. First, the works exhibited here, with which we wish precisely to recall the greatness of this director, are paintings and therefore, whether one likes them or not, they legitimately approach the many others that the Museum offers for public enjoyment. Secondly, art, artists, are granted the right (or perhaps better, the right-duty) to draw heavily on the reality in which they are immersed, as has always been the case, since the time of rock art: to capture its features and return them, immortalizing them, to the observers of their creations. To return them, enriched by the artist’s gaze, able with this to make them the vehicle of arcane messages. This is what painting, sculpture, in general the visual arts do: among which it is easy to include the art, when it is art, of those who express themselves through cinema. Fellini for this is fine, in ours as in any other museum.”

“A century ago Federico Fellini was born, one of the most beloved and celebrated directors of all time, who has marked the history of world cinematography, figurative arts and costume design, indelibly sculpting our collective imagination,” curators Francesca Bianucci and Chiara Cinelli point out. “As part of the celebrations for the centenary of his birth, the exhibition 100 X 100 Fellini aims to be a tribute to the great director we all know and love, but even more so to his overflowing poetic imagination, which he lavished in all his works, whether drawings, writings or films, and which still constitutes an extraordinary reservoir of poetry and beauty, an object of study and source of inspiration for contemporary filmmakers, writers and artists. This world overflowing with imagination and vitality iscelebrated by 50 highly talented contemporary artists, exponents of different art forms and expressing themselves in a wide variety of artistic techniques, who have brought to life 100 unpublished works of art brought together in an original and poetic choral tribute. Even in the fragmentary nature of visions, signs and voices, this exuberant visual journey is traversed by a common inspiration and a set of resonances that lead back, all of them, to that surreal imaginative world that Fellini was able to give us in each of his artistic expressions.”

Enriching the exhibition itinerary, which intends to be characterized by the coexistence of different languages and styles, are two special contributions: internationally renowned photographer Maria Mulas presents a portrait of Federico Fellini, taken in Milan on April 2, 1987; sculptor Carlo Previtali exhibits his Gradisca, a polychrome raku ceramic sculpture, a tribute to one of the most famous “masks” in Fellini’s cinema.

The exhibition catalog hosts a critical contribution signed by art historian Claudio Caserta, who celebrates Federico Fellini’s overflowing artistic personality, offering the reader/viewer of this exhibition further insights into Fellini’s world. Dwelling in particular on the Fellini of the years of And the Ship Goes and The Voice of the Moon, Caserta observes, "The further Fellini goes into his personal existential journey, the more he sows dubious questions: where does the music end and the dead where? Will there be a transition between dimensions? Can it end like that? In The Voice of the Moon there will also be the autobiographical grief over the epilogue’s missing child, that Journey of G. Mastorna, thought of, written, drawn and, inevitably, not shot on stage. The protagonist learns of his disappearance as a detached spectator. Fellini had been able to lead literature from existential questions far beyond the masters of the nineteenth century. And without even worrying about the, precisely, eminently literary datum, he had gone so far as to recount, with the slight detachment of one who has now accomplished the feat, a dimension of beyond-life, made up of normality, of a different and even banal existence of a distracted traveler who has just learned on television of his death in the air disaster, from which he deduces he has naturally begun the journey into eternity. In another way it had also happened to Palazzeschi, when he saw again, with natural amazement, people who had disappeared reappear on the platforms of stations crossed by the train whose train he was a traveler."

Artists in the exhibition: Adriano Bernini, AnnaLaura Cantone, Max Cardelli, Claudio Caserta, iomso Tommaso Cavallini, Silvia Cibaldi, Pasquale Cipolletta, Patrizia Comand, Germana Conca, Lamberto Correggiari, Pantaleo Cretì, Elisabetta Cusato - Eliscus, Tony Dallara, Ivano D’Annibale, Gaetano D’Auria, Marco Donghi, Lilian Drozduk, Gian Paolo Dulbecco, Marilena Faraci, Hélène Foata, Diana Forassiepi, Yaya Frigerio, Maria Victoria Gervaso - Mavì, Emilio Gianni, Giovanni Gianni, Sandro Gorra, Angelika Kallenbach, Mona Larsen, Pasquale Liguori, Lydia Lorenzi, Marco Manzella, Laura Marmai, Shuhei Matsuyama, Roberta Mattioli, Elias Maya, Claudio Onorato, Agostina Pallone, Leonardo Pecoraro, Beniamino Piantoni, Tiziana Priori, Daniela Rancati, M&G Redaelli, Monica Rossetti, Jeannette Rütsche - Sperya, Annita Scotti, Gianluigi Serravalli, Donatella Sommariva, Corrado Spreafico, Anna Sutor, Rita Tripodi. With special contributions from Maria Mulas and Carlo Previtali.

The exhibition (admission included in the museum ticket) opens Wednesday through Sunday from 9:30 am to noon and 3 to 5:30 pm. For all information you can visit the official website of the Francesco Gonzaga Diocesan Museum.

In Mantua, 100 artists to celebrate Fellini's 100th birthday

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