«Poet in verse and prose, always, Francesco Arcangeli, of dense but at times brilliant colours, of rhythms that are both serious (not calm) and free, open, so to speak, bright”. This is how his friend Attilio Bertolucci spoke about the pages of art criticism written by him Bolognese art historian Francesco Arcangeli, Momi for friends. Half a century after his death, a program of initiatives dedicated to him opens today which in the title, «Plotting», refers to a key word of Arcangeli’s critical vision. Tramando was for him the hidden thread of an unconscious affinity of vision of the world, which binds different artists in time and space and allows us to find common denominators. The tradition in which we were born and walk and which we will leave to the generations that follow.
The reading group
The program will include museum tours, a reading group, an exhibition and a series of conferences. Starting today at 5pm inGnudi Hall in via Belle Arti 54, registration by email [email protected], with Jadranka Bentini, president of the Zucchelli Foundation and former Superintendent for artistic and historical heritage in Bologna, who will lead a reading group. Focused on four fundamental texts by Arcangeli, written between 1952 and 1963, dedicated to specific themes and personalities. «Arcangels – explains Bentini – he can be considered a complementary master to Roberto Longhi during the years of his teaching at the chair of Art History at the University of Bologna. There is no limit to Arcangeli’s intuitive genius which revealed the work of art through research in which the emotional component plays an important role, translating it into a prose of authentic pathos without distinction between criticism and poetry”.
Archangelsborn in 1915, collaborated with Cesare Gnudi and Andrea Emiliani during the years of their direction of the Art Gallery and was director of the Gallery of Modern Art, now Mambo, from 1958 to 1968. Fu also a militant critic and friend of painters, capable like few others of penetrating the depths of their work. The fulcrum of the project will be a single visit route divided between three museum locations, which will interest the artists to whom Arcangeli dedicated his careful studies. The National Art Gallery will propose an itinerary on the works and the artists of the exhibition «Nature and expression», presented at the Archiginnasio in 1970. Mambo and Museo Morandi will inaugurate an exhibition in the Project Room in via Don Minzoni dedicated to Arcangeli’s acquisitions for the Gallery of Modern Art. The Mambo will propose a selection of works not exhibited for some time, in particular informal art, while the Morandi Museum will present eight works donated by Morandi in 1961 to the Gallery of Modern Art. With seven paintings and thirteen etchings from the collection accompanied by comments and interpretations taken mainly from the 1964 monograph dedicated by the critic to the Bolognese artist. The one that profoundly marked Arcangeli’s life, because it was contested and finally rejected by Morandi.
