Autumn 2020: five exhibitions of modern and contemporary art

Five of the best and most awaited exhibitions of modern and contemporary art of 2020: the new great exhibition of Linea d’ombra on Vincent Van Gogh, a fairy-tale and spiritual Chagall in Rovigo, an exhibition by Renata Rampazzi on the theme of violence against women in Rome and two temporary contemporary art exhibitions at the Mart in Rovereto.

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Vincent van Gogh, Autoritratto con cappello di feltro grigio, 1887, olio su tela, Van Gogh Museum (Vincent van Gogh Foundation), Amsterdam

Van Gogh. I colori della vita

The exhibition “Van Gogh. I colori della vita” – from October 10th 2020 to April 11th 2021 at Centro San Gaetano in Padua is the first major event organized by Marco Goldin and Linea d’Ombra since the beginning of the Covid-19 emergency: an important exhibition that traces the life of Van Gogh through 83 original works coming from the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The works of the Dutch artist will be accompanied by masterpieces by artists who have been instrumental in his artistic development: Gauguin, Millet, Seurat, Signac and the Japanese Hiroshige and Kunisada.
The Paduan exhibition is divided into five sections – The painter as a hero; The years of formation. From the Marcasse mine to the Hague; From Nuenen to Paris. A changing color; 1888: a decisive year; Of moons and clouds. Van Gogh and the end of his journey – and includes some of his best-known masterpieces such as the “Self-portrait with the felt hat”, “The sower”, the various fields of wheat, “Postman Roulin”, “Mr. Ginoux” and “The Arlesian”.

Marc Chagall. My Russia will love me too

chagall
Marc Chagall, La passeggiata, 1917-18, San Pietroburgo, Museo Statale Russo
© Chagall ®, by SIAE 2020

Palazzo Roverella in Rovigo will host the exhibition “Marc Chagall. My Russia will love me too”, an important event with about seventy works by the Russian master, including the major masterpieces of the Russian museums in Moscow and St. Petersburg and a generous selection of works from the private collection of the artist.
It is an exhibition that focuses on the influence of the Russian and Jewish cultural tradition on the work of the great artist: Marc Chagall was in fact born in present-day Belarus with the name Moishe Segal from a couple of Hasidic Jews and in the about 70 works (including paintings, engravings and etchings) of the exhibition it will be possible to appreciate how Yiddish folklore and Russian iconography have contributed to giving shape to a unique and fairy-tale universe rich in symbolism.
Among the works exhibited in Rovigo, the famous “Walk” and “The Wedding” – the latter exhibited for the first time outside the original Russian headquarters.

Cruor by Renata Rampazzi

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Renata Rampazzi,
Lacerazione, 1982,
olio su tela, cm 60 x 80

Cruor” is the latest exhibition by Renata Rampazzi, which can be visited at the Carlo Bilotti Aranciera Museum in Villa Borghese until January 10th 2021.
Rampazzi was born in Turin in 1948. She lives and works between Rome and Paris and since the 1970s she has been the protagonist of numerous solo shows in some of the most important European galleries. “Cruor” – originally conceived for the Borges Room on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice – collects works created with five-meter gauze on variations of reds, washed and laid out to dry, which surround the viewer like enormous bandages so to provoke an involvement not only aesthetic but above all emotional and civil.
Claudio Strinati clearly sets out the Turin artist’s vision in the exhibition catalog:
“Rampazzi’s idea was to create a path that does not explain much, instead to evoke in a high moral and intellectual tension the tremendous phenomenon of violence against women and the consequent tragedies. Thus, in the hands of the artist, the theme of blood is transformed into the most specific and very strong and engaging theme of the wound, of the laceration, of the violation, one might say, of the figurative space (a violation also desired by the artist herself) of an element of violence and disturbing disharmony precisely in a context that is instead born with the intention of giving beauty, shape, balance.”

Focus Mart: Tribute to Claudia Gian Ferrari and After Monet – Pictorialism in the Mart Collections

 

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Vik Muniz (San Paolo del Brasile, 1961)
Picture of Color, After Claude Monet, 2001
Mart, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto / Deposito Eredi Alessandro Grassi

We conclude with two exhibitions of the Mart inaugurated in June – and still open until November 22nd 2020 – but which deserve more attention than the press has been expressing so far.

The temporary “Tribute to Claudia Gian Ferrari” s dedicated to the memory of the gallery owner of the same name who died 10 years ago and who left a nucleus of extraordinary ceramics by Fausto Melotti at the Mart starting from the 1930s. The exhibition places the works of the Rovereto artist in dialogue with a selection of works created by those protagonists of Italian art whom Gian Ferrari loved and supported with particular dedication in a particularly curated exhibition itinerary in which masterpieces by Boccioni, Casorati, Sironi, Marussig, Funi, De Pisis, Cagnaccio di San Pietro, Dudreville and Pirandello surround the ceramics of Menotti placed in the centre of the space.

The exhibition “After Monet – Pictorialism in the Mart Collections”, on the other hand, takes inspiration from a single work, the “After Monet” by photographer Vik Muniz: a painting of Monet reproduced with Pantone cards in the form of a collage and photographed by the Brazilian artist. The rest of the exhibition starts from this point: a selection of photographic works that illustrate a dialogue and a clash between photography and painting, which is typical of contemporary art.

Taarget Point, Italian Ideas