New Fort Belvedere exhibitions unveiled: solo shows by Davide Rivalta and Massimo Listri

A new season of exhibitions at Forte di Belvedere will begin June 29, 2019. Among the big news, already anticipated by Florence Mayor Dario Nardella, is the scientific and cultural merger between Forte di Belvedere and Museo Novecento and theopening of two new exhibitionhalls.

Until October 20, 2019, Forte Belvedere will host the exhibitions A perfect day by Massimo Listri and My Land by Davide Rivalta, exhibition projects conceived by Sergio Risaliti and promoted by the City of Florence and organized by Mus.e.

The exteriors of Forte Belvedere will be populated by Davide Rivalta’s animals: ten buffaloes, an eagle, a rhinoceros and two wolves. Curated by Saretto Cincinelli and Sergio Risaliti, My Land proposes untamed presences in a wild invasion of space. The basement of the Fortwill also host site-specific drawings by the artist depicting large birds and dozens of birds in flight; in the center of one room the figure of a rhinoceros that seems to turn toward visitors. A second rhinoceros will be visible in the outdoor space of the Cavea of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Theater, while a bear will soon occupy the loggia of the Novecento Museum. The birds in flight and the rhinoceros are also a tribute to two great Renaissance artists, Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer.

The second floor of the Fortress will be occupied by the works of Massimo Listri: the artist has taken for the occasion unpublished shots at the Convent of San Marco, the Uffizi, Palazzo Vecchio and San Lorenzo, immortalizing the interior architecture of the Florentine Renaissance. Interesting is the room devoted to the New Sacristy in San Lorenzo, of which Listri offers a panoptic view of the environment divided into four shots. He has reread Buonarroti ’s masterpiece using perspective and homogenizing focus. These images of places without any human presence are flanked by glimpses of industrial and historical spaces that the artist has framed by identifying modern visual codes in them.

"With the double solo show of Massimo Listri and Davide Rivalta, the tradition of the Forte di Belvedere is updated, which since Henry Moore’s never forgotten solo show in 1972 has been the coveted goal of great masters at the height of their careers, a true “altar” of consecration and historicization. This year, the Fort renews its vocation for the contemporary to position itself in the art system as an interdisciplinary stage and for the enhancement of new generations. In line with what is happening at the Museo Novecento and in a complementary way to what is proposed in the city, the Forte di Belvedere is becoming a promoter of contemporaneity in Florence, a leading actor in a new renaissance initiated with the great exhibitions of recent years from Jeff Koons and Urs Fischer in Piazza Signoria, to John Currin and Gleen Brown at the Bardini Museum, to Alighiero Boetti and Emilio Isgrò in Salone dei Cinquecento. Now the exhibitions of Massimo Listri and Davide Rivalta appear to us differently complementary. In Listri we recognize the kind of magic in photography that brings the gaze from the outside to the inside, to introduce it to the metaphysics of visual language, that of architectural spaces and sculpture as a heritage of beauty. Of Rivalta we discover a different, even more primal magic: that of an artist who still lives and yearns for the outdoors, who brings the outside to the inside. Reversing the dominant relationship between man and animal, Davide poetically reveals the presence of the origin of time among us now. With Listri we experience beauty in art and architecture as the inalienable heritage of language. Rivalta creates the ultimate possibility of an encounter with the sovereign beauty of the animal, the most alien among us whose being outdoors we envy and regret. Two exhibitions that bring into play awe and wonder, the inescapable diversity and distance of the other, that of magnificence in historic spaces and that of royalty in the open air, dominated by the presence of artistic beauty in one case and the animal spirit in the other," said Risaliti, artistic director of the exhibitions at Forte di Belvedere and Museo Novecento.

Hours: Daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Tickets: Full 3 euros, reduced 2 euros for 18- to 25-year-olds. Free for under 18 and Forte di Belvedere Card and Firenze Card holders. The Forte di Belvedere ticket entitles visitors to free admission to the Museo Novecento and vice versa.

Pictured: The Sala del Mappamondo in Palazzo Vecchio in a shot by Massimo Listri.

New Fort Belvedere exhibitions unveiled: solo shows by Davide Rivalta and Massimo Listri

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