In Rome, an exhibition of works on napkins pays homage to the osteria of painters Mafai, Turcato, Dorazio

L’osteria dei pittori is the title of the group show running until Feb. 25 in Rome at La Nuova Pesa, the brainchild of Roberto Gramiccia. The exhibition deliberately borrows the title of Ugo Pirro ’s book that reconstructs the events, meetings and clashes, of the artists who in the 1950s gathered at the Roman trattoria of the Menghi brothers on Via Flaminia. The aim, therefore, is to open a cone of light on an unrepeatable period in art history.

The undisputed king of that tavern, actually a true coterie of refined intellectuals (not just painters), was undoubtedly Mario Mafai. Mafai used to draw or paint on the Menghi’s napkins and tablecloths, imitated by other almost always penniless artists, such as Giulio Turcato, Piero Dorazio and Pietro Consagra, who often used those napkins to pay for lunches and dinners washed down with a bad white wine from the Castelli Romani. In the exhibition at La Nuova Pesa, the Menghi brothers’ trattoria and Pirro’s book are a cue to allude to a universal reality that has found in Rome, and in the meridian culture dear to Albert Camus, an ideal homeland. A reality that traces in conviviality, in the pleasure of the table and in the stimulus to a human and humanistic comparison that is never tired, its rational. A value that the time in which we live sadly tends to dissipate.

Fifty artists have agreed to use simple cloth napkins to create their works. The ensemble is intended to provide the mise en scène of a coterie of artists within which each individual napkin can be the symbol of those who, eating drinking talking, perhaps plan a revolution that will change the world or inaugurate a new artistic Avant-Garde. Think not only of the Menghi but of Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, Le Chat noir in Paris, the Aragno and Greco cafes in early 20th-century Rome, Jamaica in Milan, Rosati, Canova, Bar della Pace, and Pommidoro.

For all information, you can visit the official website of La Nuova Pesa.

Pictured is Mario Mafai’sOsteria romana .

In Rome, an exhibition of works on napkins pays homage to the osteria of painters Mafai, Turcato, Dorazio

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