New York, November 8, 2001, the photographic work in five acts of German director and photographer Wim Wenders returns to the exhibition at Villa Panza until 12 May 2024.
The bare and intimate space of the small Scuderia of the villa is almost transfigured into a chapel, which induces silence and reflection in the presence of the five gigantic photographs taken by the artist in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, which portray Ground Zero with the rubble still smoking. A prayer in images, a warning against the violence of terrorism, and the suggestive, powerful vision of a collective drama, which today as then, unfortunately, interests and involves everyone.
An exceptional historical testimony, because Wim Wenders, posing as assistant to the only photographer commissioned by the City of New York, was the only one able to take other images of the otherwise off-limits area so few days after the tragedy. It is a highly suggestive artistic vision, which thanks to the use of a panoramic camera widens the gaze without losing the crude detail and undermines the perception of those ruins, immortalizing even their charm: the power of the light that penetrates the rubble and induces hope for the future, for humanity.
The work in five shots was donated by the director and his wife Donata Wenders to the FAI in 2015, following the exhibition of his works at Villa Panza, entitled “Wim Wenders. AMERICA” and entirely dedicated to representing his vision, as a European artist fascinated by America, a sensitive observer and interpreter of that culture. Just like Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, who from the end of the 1950s, visiting America, was fascinated by that land of immense spaces, of nature and light, of colors and contrasts, which young artists then unknown, now masters, were expressing himself in new forms of art: with far-sighted intuition and profound sensitivity he bought the works, and thus began his exceptional collection, known throughout the world, widespread in the largest international museums, but fully represented here in his family home , on Colle di Biumo, in Varese.
