The inner world of some famous painters through their gaze: a research group show in Reggio Emilia

From May 16 to June 15, 2024, the de’ Bonis Gallery in Reggio Emilia presents Una forza che crea uno sguardo, una sguardo che crea una forza. The Artist’s Vision in Twentieth-Century Italian Painting, a research group show that brings together some 20 works by great names of the Italian figurative twentieth century, such as Renato Birolli, Antonio Bueno, Carlo Carrà, Bruno Cassinari, Giovanni Frangi, Renato Guttuso, Antonio Ligabue, Alberto Manfredi, Zoran Music, Fausto Pirandello, Aligi Sassu, Mario Schifano, Tino Stefanoni and Orfeo Tamburi.

“Following the thread that runs among heterogeneous works,” explain gallery owners Stanislao de’ Bonis and Margherita Fontanesi, “the exhibition tells us something profound about artists, about art and even about ourselves. In the painted eyes of the portraits, can we also find the artist’s gaze? And in the self-portraits, how much of the painter’s soul is there? And in the landscapes? Do we see reality through our own eyes or through those of the author? This exhibition tries to trace the inner world of some famous painters through their gaze.”

Visitors will be observed by portraits and self-portraits, but they will also be confronted with landscapes and still lifes that will invite them to look at the world through the artist’s eyes.

In seeing an artist, not only his eyes are involved, but also his sensibility, his socio-cultural context, the historical era in which he lives and his personal journey. All of these elements combine to create what is called the “inner gaze.” Artists often paint empty eyes, barely hinted at or even closed. Far from being an element of incommunicability, these absent gazes tell us so much. Sometimes they probe depths of the soul that a direct and limpid gaze would not have been able to reach.

However, the exhibition is not meant to be limited to a review of portraits: alongside the painted faces will be found landscapes that invite us to make a transition from the interior to the exterior. The audience is thus placed in front of what the artist is looking at, and the two gazes end up overlapping.

For info: www.galleriadebonis.com

The exhibition is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Opening Thursday, May 16 from 6 to 8:30 p.m.

Image: Bruno Cassinari, Figure of a Woman, detail (1967; oil on canvas, 93 x 73 cm)

The inner world of some famous painters through their gaze: a research group show in Reggio Emilia

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