Telling classicism through contemporary design. At the Pilotta in Parma Theatrum Mundi.

From June 3, 2020, to Feb. 14, 2021, the Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta in Parma will host the Fornasetti Theatrum Mundi exhibition, part of the Rivitalizzazioni del Contemporaneo, a call conceived on the occasion of Parma Capitale Italiana della Cultura 2020-2021.

Curated by Barnaba Fornasetti, Valeria Manzi and Simone Verde, the exhibition is intended to be a layered journey between classic and modern, past and present: hundreds of creations from theatelier founded by Piero Fornasetti are placed in dialogue with the collections of the Pilotta to narrate classicism through contemporary design.

A true “theater of the world” will be created between the architecture and works of the Pilotta with the imagery of Piero and Barnaba Fornasetti: a network of iconographic cross-references and cultural suggestions that reveals the intellectual status of the objects on display and the images in the exhibition. A Theatrum in the sixteenth-century meaning that declines in the infinite variety of the world the encyclopedic unity of knowledge.

The exhibition itinerary unfolds in nuclei related to the main themes of Fornasetti’s work, such as ruins and the past, architecture, music, drawing, graphics, collecting, the everyday object and illusionistic and dreamlike dimensions.

Beginning with the twenty-one showcases placed inside the Petitot Gallery of the Palatina Library and the Galleria dell’Incoronata, the exhibition enters the Teatro Farnese, built on the model of the classical theater, the same architectural structure from which the idea of the Theatrum Mundi formulated by the neo-Platonic rhetorician Julius Camillus originated. The latter placed within the Vitruvian theater figures and symbols arranged in a precise order, with the idea that it functioned as a kind of artificial mind, attributing to the imagination the power to understand, reconstruct and interpret the world. An idea akin to Fornasetti’s creativity.

Pictured is the set-up in the Teatro Farnese. Ph.Credit Cosimo Filippini

Telling classicism through contemporary design. At the Pilotta in Parma Theatrum Mundi.

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.