The attention that the Diotti Museum has dedicated to the artist’s work since its foundation in 2007 is now translated into an exhibition initiative – curated by Walter Rosa – focused on the theme of the atelier. The artists’ ateliers, working methods, tools and materials of the various expressive techniques have for some time been under the spotlight of historical-critical studies, of investigations focused on aspects of protection and conservation, as well as the subject of exhibitions and real own museographic interventions.
ATELIER OF CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS – The exhibition primarily represents a journey through ten ateliers of contemporary artists who have collaborated with the Museum over the years (Vincenzo Balena, Brunivo Buttarelli, Armando Chitolina, Italo Lanfredini, Fabrizio Merisi, Officina Originale, Mario Pozzan, Giorgio Tentolini, Francesco Vitale, Gianna Zanafredi). The proposed path does not aim so much at comparing individual poetics on the basis of a common theme, but rather at highlighting the variety and heterogeneity of the workshops, between historical models and singularities, sometimes eccentric. With this exhibition the gaze shifts from the works to the creative laboratories of the authors.
THE ROOTS IN HISTORY – Ancient works and materials act as a corollary to the journey through contemporary ateliers with the aim of identifying the constants that link these artists to the tradition of drawing, painting and sculpture, creating a broader short circuit of themes, models, techniques and operating methods . Very significant, in this regard, are the work notebooks displayed in the exhibition, alongside drawings, prints, manuals and tools. The myth of the origin of drawing (and the arts) and that of the artist are evoked through some eighteenth-nineteenth century prints engraved or taken by Bartolozzi, Cunego, Ingres, Granet. Images of the sculptor’s atelier Alceo Dossena they are flanked by some instruments that belonged to him and then reused by his nephew Ercole Priori.
THE IMAGE OF THE ARTIST – The artist’s work is also seen through the image that the artist conveys of himself: portraits-self-portraits and artist portraits in the atelier are part of a process of self-awareness sometimes communicated in terms of advertising self-promotion and gradually codified according to specific forms and methods with display of instruments and emblems, work and exhibition space setups, precise liturgies and rituals. We also find a sort of allegorized self-portrait in objects of affection, those “palettes of objects” which are often essential ingredients of many pictorial compositions. In this staging of the author, his poetics and, sometimes, his admirers and clients, photography also plays an essential role, starting from the last decades of the nineteenth century. It will therefore be possible to see, among other things, some nineteenth-century works on the theme of the painter and the model, self-portraits of Anselmo Gorni, Gianfranco Manara, Paride Falchi, Luigi Tagliarini, Dino Villani, Cesare Zavattinias well as portraits of artists taken by masters of photography, such as that of Francis Bacon in a polaroid of Peter Beard.
THE MUSEUM ROUTE – The exhibition offers the opportunity to shine the spotlight on many works that are part of the Museum’s permanent exhibition itinerary, including the painters’ ateliers Goliardo Padova, Palmiro Vezzoni, Tino Aroldi and the sculptor Ercole Priori: archive materials from these artists (prints, drawings, photographs) not normally visible to the public are in fact on display.
THE TERRITORY – To accompany the exhibition, a calendar of extraordinary openings will be proposed to allow the visit of some artists’ ateliers present in the area.
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Tags: Diotti Museum Atelier creative base exhibition
