From Saturday 1 June the important Perugian museum center of Penna Palace has finally returned to being fully accessible to the public. Located in the historic center of Perugia, as well as conserving the most important archive of works by the futurist Perugian Gerardo Dottorithe civic museum of Palazzo della Penna preserves in its permanent collections the 6 precious thematic blackboards of Joseph Beuysthe result of the historic meeting with Alberto Burri of 3 April 1980 at the Rocca Paolina in Perugia, when the two authors publicly affirmed their independence towards the art system.
Renewed in its management and in its cafeteria and bookshop services, the civic museum of Palazzo della Penna resumes its programming in great shape, hosting an interesting journey into the visual culture of the sixties. Psychedelia it is in fact the title of the substantial exhibition curated by Carlo Terrosi which celebrates that international aesthetic phenomenon which acted as a strong point between the Sixties and Seventies generational gluemanaging to incorporate heterogeneous requests within it: from dispute at youth counter-culturesfrom the most current artistic solicitations to music and the pop cultureleaving an indelible mark in the history of culture capable of influencing aesthetic taste up to the present day.
Starting from Beat Generationan expression coined by Jack Kerouac already in 1948, passing through the iconic “Magic Bus” who toured America in the footsteps of On the Roadundisputed myth of all the hippies of the sixties, we arrive at the San Francisco of Summer of Love along an exhibition itinerary divided into numerous rooms on the second floor of the museum, which ends with the video art ei flyers original gods free rave party of the late nineties, in a journey in which they are presented further 70 original postersthe work of the main authors of psychedelic graphics, some re-editions from American archives and special editions signed by the artists.
The works are sorted in three large sections dedicated to the main centers of development and diffusion of psychedelic culture between San Francisco, London and Italy. In addition to the graphic section, the exhibition also presents documents on the relationship between cinema, advertising And psychedelia, discsphotos, videos, comic books And rare vintage magazines.
Among the authors on display are the so-called Big Five (Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Rick Griffin and Victor Moscoso), a group of cartoonists whose posters created for the first concerts of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd held at the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco, they marked the birth of psychedelic graphics.
In the San Francisco of hippie movement and of counter-cultureIn fact, these posters immediately became popular and it was easy to realize that it was not just a banal advertisement but the emergence of a new form of graphic art which made its own and reworked suggestions coming from important stylistic trends such asOptical ArtL’Art nouveauThe neo-orientalism and the Surrealismfully representing the emergence of a new cultural phenomenon: Psychedelia, with its wide branches between music, poetry, cinema and comics, and of a new graphic style, defined by the critic George Melly Nouveau Art Nouveau.
In the same years, London was also colored with psychedelic lights and arabesques and the most important band of the time, The Beatlesmakes psychedelic culture iconic through the photographs of Richard Avedon created for the promotion of the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), manipulated in a psychedelic key by the graphic designer Hallen Hurlburtwhich give life to four posters that are now part of the permanent collections of important museums, such as the MOMA of New York or the Victoria & Albert Museum of London and chosen for the cover of the Perugia exhibition in the version with the protagonist John Lennon.
This is the moment in which psychedelia also arrives in Italy, in Milan, where Fernanda Pivano, Ettore Sottsass And Allen Ginsberg in ’67 they created the magazine “Fresh Planet“, published in just two issues in 300 copies, experimental both from a content and graphic point of view, with prestigious collaborations, among which those of Andrea Branzi and Archizoom are worth mentioning, Piero Gilardi And Michelangelo Pistoletto.
Meanwhile in Rome, again in ’67, Mario Schifano followed the example of Andy Warhol with the Velvet Underground band: in addition to giving the name to his own musical group, The Stars by Mario Schifano, for which he created the cover of the only LP produced, made it an extension of his own work by trying his hand at being an impresario and concert organizer. The Italian artist also took care of the graphics and photographs of several of the Italian band’s albums Team84 present and appreciable on display.
The exhibition, which can be visited until September 15, 2024, is produced by Cooperative le Macchine Celibi and by the association BoArt of Bologna in collaboration with CAOS Museum of Terni and sponsored by ABA Pietro Vannucci Academy of Fine Arts of Perugia, ADI Umbria Delegation, ADCI, Italian Art Directors Club.
