The Sanremo Festival in a photo exhibition at the Gallerie d'Italia in Turin, Italy

The Sanremo Festival 2024 is just a few days away, and Turin’s Gallerie d’Italia is dedicating an exhibition to Italy’s most famous song festival. Titled No Age. The Sanremo Festival in Black and White 1951-1976, the exhibition can be visited from Feb. 1 to May 12, 2024; it is curated by Aldo Grasso and, thanks to the media partnership with Rai, is enriched by video-sound contributions in collaboration with Rai Teche. It also enjoys the patronage of the Piedmont Region and the City of Turin.

The Sanremo Festival was born in 1951, is organized by Rai in Turin, in three evenings and broadcast live by radio from the Salone delle Feste at the Casino. The first editions were broadcast only by radio, but in 1955, the event began to gain popularity and even TV decided to show it to viewers. Since then, in fact, the history of the Sanremo Festival has proceeded hand in hand with the history of Italian television.

The photojournalists of thePublifoto Agency sensed the importance of the event and, during the years it was hosted in the Sanremo Casino (1951-1976), took about 15 thousand photographs of the Festival.

The exhibition at the Gallerie d’Italia in Turin showcases a nucleus of photographs from theIntesa Sanpaolo Publifoto Archive, tracing the years when the Festival was hosted in the Sanremo Casino before moving permanently to the Ariston Theater and dwelling only in a few cases on the images of the artists’ performances on stage, to focus instead on the “offstage.” the wait of the singers in the stalls during rehearsals; the catwalks of the artists (including foreign guests) around the city of Sanremo; the production of autographs for the audience; the artists in the makeup room; the audience; the artists portrayed in curious situations, but also the orchestra, the jury, the press room. Photographs that portray the artists away from the spotlight, in the moments of daily life that accompany the hectic days of the Festival; photographs that testify to an Italy in a hurry to forget the war and poverty, that wants to entrust to songs a newfound lightheartedness, but also, as in the case of the song Vola colomba, a desire for revenge about the Trieste or Julian question. The soundtrack of the American liberation army had been boogie-woogie, now it was necessary to find an all-Italian one, linked to the melodic tradition and bel canto.

On the occasion of the exhibition, Intesa Sanpaolo’s Publifoto Archive will publish online the catalog cards of all the photographs of the services produced by the Publifoto agency.

Photo by Andrea Guermani.

The Sanremo Festival in a photo exhibition at the Gallerie d'Italia in Turin, Italy

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