There are the most iconic and well-known works throughout the world, such as those dedicated to Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minneli, works that have become symbols of mass culture and American society of the 1960s, or the very famous “Self-Portrait”, or the series of “Flowers”, displayed alongside polaroids portraying artists and prominent figures of the time. But there are also lesser-known works which however exalt the artistic greatness of the one who is the king of Pop Art. In Modica, a baroque city that is a World Heritage Site, it is now possible to admire the works of Andy Warhol and those of his artist friends who followed him in the birth of an artistic movement that revolutionized and influenced the world of art in the following decades and up to today. With an investigation that aims to amaze the viewer through a well-defined path, the exhibition “Andy Warhol and POP Friends” promoted by the Teatro Garibaldi Foundation, curated by the art critic and academic, was inaugurated in the halls of the former Convento del Carmine Graziano Menolascina, in synergy with the newspaper La Sicilia, Dse Pubblicità and Mutika Emc. Among the works on display also the famous “Vesuvius”, a large acrylic on canvas from 1985, created during Warhol’s stay in Naples. It depicts the erupting volcano Vesuvius, an extraordinary explosion of colors that symbolizes the power and grandeur of nature in a pop key.
An exhibition that allows visitors to immerse themselves in the lively and kaleidoscopic world of Pop Art, exploring not only the works of the legendary Andy Warhol, but also those of other extraordinary artists who shared this revolutionary artistic movement with him: Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Bowes, Francesco Clemente, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtestein, Robert Rauschenberg. The inauguration was attended by Maria Tonino Cannata, respectively superintendent of the Garibaldi Theater Foundation, Giampiero Bella, general secretary of the Free Municipal Consortium of Ragusa, Domenico Ciancio, editor of the newspaper La Sicilia, and Antonello Piraneo, director of the same newspaper who underlined the cultural importance of the exhibition for the region. Among the interventions also those of Stefano Giaquinta, CEO of Mutika, and Paolo Nifosì, art critic and historian. The curator Graziano Menolascina underlined the contemporaneity, also in a social key, of Andy Warhol and the artists, who recalled how revolutionary Pop Art was and how much it allowed art to be made popular. Special guest was the artist David Bowes, one of the authors still alive among those on display, who shared his experience and his bond with Warhol and the other artists on display. The exhibition represents a wide-ranging cultural project on which an extraordinary synergy has been created between the Teatro Garibaldi Foundation, the newspaper La Sicilia – Domenico Sanfilippo Editore, DSE Pubblicità and Mutika Emc, with the support of the Sicilian Region, the Sicilian Regional Assembly (thanks to the support of the Hon. Ignazio Abbate), the Free Consortium of Ragusa and the Municipality of Modica. Pop Art, born in the 1950s and 1960s, is an artistic movement that has profoundly transformed the perception of contemporary art. Opposed to the dominant post-war abstractionism and formalism, Pop Art embraced mass culture, advertising, comics and popular images, bringing these elements into art galleries and pictorial works. Andy Warhol pioneered this movement, using techniques such as silkscreen to reproduce iconic images of American culture, making art accessible and understandable to the general public. An art that from today envelops visitors, tourists and art enthusiasts also in Sicily, in this extraordinary exhibition-event in Modica available until 13 October. Info, timetables and reservations on the website www.fondazioneteatrogaribaldi.it.
Save
