Asti contemporanea. Collezioni private, from 17 October 2015 to 29 November 2015
Asti
Iznik, 1999
smalto su vetro
50 × 40 cm
The history of Italian art since the post-war period, as seen through some seventy works from Asti’s collections. At Palazzo Mazzetti (Corso Vittorio Alfieri, 357 – Asti), from 17 October to 29 November 2015, “ASTI CONTEMPORANEA. Private Collections”, a group exhibition curated by Maria Federica Chiola with a critical essay by Raffaella A. Caruso.
Organised by the Fondazione Palazzo Mazzetti and the City of Asti, in collaboration with the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Asti, and under the patronage of the Piedmont Region and the Province of Asti, the exhibition will open on Friday 16 October at 6.00 pm.
Organised by the Fondazione Palazzo Mazzetti and the City of Asti, in collaboration with the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Asti, and under the patronage of the Piedmont Region and the Province of Asti, the exhibition will open on Friday 16 October at 6.00 pm.
On display are seventy-two works by fifty-one artists, including Giuseppe Capogrossi, Carla Accardi, Giulio Turcato, Piero Dorazio, Mimmo Rotella, Afro, Lucio Fontana, Piero Gilardi, Valentino Vago, Getulio Alviani, Giorgio Griffa, Alighiero Boetti and Paolo Cotani.
The project stems from the deep interest the city of Asti has held in art since the 1940s, with exhibitions, awards and a well-established collecting tradition. Examples of this include the “National Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Set Design”, inaugurated in 1949 to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Vittorio Alfieri, and the first edition of the Alfieri Prize (1950).
It is precisely for this reason that “ASTI CONTEMPORANEA” has come into being, thanks to the city’s collectors who have made available to Palazzo Mazzetti a rich collection of works acquired over the years. The exhibition thus reinterprets, in rooms organised by year and theme, the history of Italian art from the post-war period through the economic boom to new artistic languages, through the lens of the collections of Asti-based lenders alone, whose works have proven to be an expression of the region’s significance through art and culture.
As Raffaella A. Caruso writes in the critical essay in the catalogue, ‘Collecting a work of art, making it one’s own, allowing it to engage with its peers, creating unexpected connections, and placing the work in often unlikely contexts means expanding the work’s potential for communication, contributing to an educational function within one’s social context, enhancing one’s quality of life through beauty, bequeathing to posterity a snapshot of society imbued with a highly personal sensibility, often being ahead of one’s time, anticipating trends, and being able to say twenty years later, ‘I was there’”.
The common thread of the exhibition, interpreted graphically by the curator in the deconstruction of the Palazzo Mazzetti logo—which recurs throughout the displays and in the catalogue—represents the persistence of an idea that, from the very beginning, sought to identify Palazzo Mazzetti as a place of art and culture. “A subtle common thread,” explains Maria Federica Chiola, “which was part of the project from the outset and clear in my mind, held all the elements—pictures and ideas—together until the exhibition was realised. As an architect, I know that no project is ever realised exactly as initially conceived: there is a kind of providential force that guides and brings together all the energies.”
The common thread, graphically transformed by the curator into “Fil - Rouge”, becomes an augmented reality work thanks to the intervention of the artist Aidan, who makes the catalogue interactive, offering the viewer unexpected emotions and allowing them to relive the entire exhibition.
Visitors will be guided from room to room by red walls which, together with white, evoke the colours of the city of Asti, to which a small room is dedicated. The exhibition itinerary also includes three works (by Giuseppe Capogrossi, Antonio Corpora and Giuseppe Santomaso) from which some of the tapestries created in 1960 for the transatlantic liner Leonardo da Vinci by the Scassa tapestry workshop – the pride of the city – were drawn, based on a selection made by Giulio Carlo Argan.
The exhibition will be open from Tuesday to Sunday from 10.30 am to 6.30 pm (last admission at 5.30 pm). The admission ticket to the Palazzo Mazzetti Civic Museum (€5.00) grants free access to the “ASTI CONTEMPORANEA” exhibition. A 303-page catalogue featuring an introduction by Maria Federica Chiola, a critical essay by Raffaella A. Caruso and a wealth of illustrations. Media partner: “La Stampa”. For further information: tel. 0141530403, info@palazzomazzetti.it, mazzetti@fondazionecrasti.it, www.palazzomazzetti.it.
Works by: Carla Accardi, Getulio Alviani, Enrico Baj, Paolo Baratella, Afro Basaldella, Vasco Bendini, Aldo Bergolli, Gianni Bertini, Alberto Biasi, Renato Birolli, Alighiero Boetti, Corrado Cagli, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Bruno Cassinari, Enrico Castellani, Antonio Ciarallo, Antonio Corpora, Paolo Cotani, Roberto Crippa, Dadamaino, Sergio Dangelo, Lucio Del Pezzo, Piero Dorazio, Gianni Dova, Lucio Fontana, Reale Franco Frangi, Piero Gilardi, Giorgio Griffa, Umberto Mastroianni, Aldo Mondino, Mattia Moreni, Ennio Morlotti, Gualtiero Nativi, Ugo Nespolo, Mario Nigro, Claudio Olivieri, Tancredi Parmeggiani, Cesare Peverelli, Pino Pinelli, Mimmo Rotella, Piero Ruggeri, Antonio Sanfilippo, Giuseppe Santomaso, Emilio Scanavino, Mario Schifano, Giacomo Soffiantino, Giulio Turcato, Valentino Vago, Emilio Vedova, Claudio Verna, Luigi Veronesi.
Iznik, 1999
smalto su vetro
50 × 40 cm
Asti contemporanea. Collezioni private
Iznik, 1999
smalto su vetro
50 × 40 cm
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