Sicily, Naxos Taormina Archaeological Park showcases 11 large sculptures by Umberto Mastroianni

Eleven large sculptures by Umberto Mastroianni (Fontana Liri, 1910 - Marino, 1998) are coming to the Naxos Taormina Archaeological Park from July 25 through Nov. 5, 2021. It is the exhibition Umberto Mastroianni. From Figuration to Abstractionism. 1939-1996, articulated between Naxos and Isola Bella that, explains Gabriella Tigano, director of the Park, "completes the cultural offer dedicated to contemporary art for this summer 2021. A wide-ranging project launched in May with Pietro Consagra ’s sculptures at the Teatro Antico in Taormina (until October 30), continued with The Hundred Sicilies. The Most Hybrid of Continents, a painting group show featuring twelve contemporary Sicilian artists (Taormina, Palazzo Ciampoli until Nov. 14), and which now sees Mastroianni’s contribution to complement the experience of getting to know visitors attracted to the Park’s archaeological heritage offerings."

On display at the two sites of Naxos and Isola Bella will be 30 sculptures by the artist from Frosinone, uncle of popular actor Marcello: the bronze faces and masks of the 1930s, when a still 20-year-old Umberto Mastroianni looked to the classical model as a guiding canon; the dynamic and imposing works of his maturity, where, in the footsteps of Boccioni, the lesson of futurism and abstractionism is evident; up to the last creations of the 1990s when, to seal the last season of research, Mastroianni abandoned the weight, hardness and opaque materiality of bronze, preferring the lightness, transparency and colored liquidity of glass. Works, the latter, which will be set up inside the historic Villa Bosurgi in Isola Bella, recently returned to public enjoyment after extraordinary maintenance work financed by the Naxos Taormina Park, manager of the site and the architectural monument, the first example of bio-architecture of the last century.

The Mastroianni exhibition, the brainchild of Gigliola Magistrelli and Lorenzo Zichichi, is curated by Giordano Bruno Guerri, Paola Molinengo Costa(Centro Studi Umberto Mastroianni) and Victoria Noel Johnson and comes to Naxos and Isola Bella after two stops (with a reduced number of works) in Erice and Lipari. For this exhibition, which concludes the traveling exhibition in Sicily, the 30 sculptures document the master’s production over a span of more than 50 years.

“The exhibition of Umberto Mastroianni’s sculptures at Naxos and Isola Bella,” stresses Regional Councillor for Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity Alberto Samonà,"confirms the versatility of archaeological sites, timeless spaces where contemporary art can find its own narrative dimension, yielding suggestions to visitors and regenerating places, stories and perceptions. After Consagra at the Ancient Theater and the painting of the twelve artists of The Hundred Sicilies at Palazzo Ciampoli, Mastroianni’s thirty sculptures at Naxos and Isola Bella complete the extraordinary cultural offer of the Naxos Taormina Archaeological Park in the sign of beauty and quality. As regional councillor for cultural heritage and Sicilian identity, I am pursuing a path of enhancement of the places of culture in our Sicily, which also passes through major initiatives of national and international scope just like this one."

“Of himself,” Giordano Bruno Guerri comments, “Mastroianni used to say ’I have always needed space, high ground, greenery around me, in order to work well.’ So here is the key to reading his works, which today, between the archaeological area of Naxos and the Isola Bella site, can continue to dialogue with nature, the sky. Even with the sea, a sublime experience for a sculptor whose work is designed to be traversed by the surrounding space and, in turn, to be traversed by it.”

A catalog is dedicated to the exhibition, published by Il Cigno GG Editions. The volume, which will collect shots of the in situ installation in the Naxos Archaeological Park and Isola Bella - as is the practice of the publishing house, which documents and enhances the exhibition project in monumental sites - is in the works and will go to press after the inauguration.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the Naxos Archaeological Park and Isola Bella.

Pictured: Umberto Mastroianni, Kermesse (1987; bronze)

Sicily, Naxos Taormina Archaeological Park showcases 11 large sculptures by Umberto Mastroianni

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