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From 16 Februrary to 13 June 2010
The Edward Hopper exhibition, after the great success had at Palazzo Reale in Milan, will arrive in Rome at the Museo Fondazione Roma. The roman venue will add other masterpieces from American museums, be displayed in an original, engaging exhibition layout and a new edition of the catalogue will be published. Promoted by the Fondazione Roma, the initial driving force behind the exhibition, thanks to the initiative of its Chairman Professor Emmanuele Francesco Maria Emanuele, the exhibition is produced with Comune di Milano – Cultura and Arthemisia Group in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Fondation de l’Hermitage in Lausanne. The exhibition is curated by Carter Foster, the Whitney Museum curator. Edward Hopper’s career is closely linked to the Whitney Museum of American Art, which hosted various exhibitions of his works from the first in 1920 at the Whitney Studio Club, to the memorable shows held in the museum in 1960, 1964 and 1980. Since 1968, thanks to the bequest of the artist’s widow Josephine, the Whitney has been home to his entire legacy: more than 2,500 works which include paintings, drawings and etchings. Aside from the 160 works on show in the Milan exhibition, the Rome event will feature more of the artist’s great masterpieces, including the beautiful Self-Portrait of 1925-1930, as well as The Sheridan Theatre (1937), New York Interior (circa 1921), Seven A. M. (1948), and South Carolina Morning (1955) along with their preparatory drawings. These extraordinary paintings will complete the group of famous works exhibited in Milan, such as Summer Interior (1909), Pennsylvania Coal Town (1947), Morning Sun (1952), Second Story Sunlight (1960), A Woman in the Sun (1961) and the stunning Girlie Show (1941). The exhibition explores the whole of Hopper’s oeuvre, and all the techniques used by an artist now viewed as a great master of the twentieth century. Most of the works are length by the Whitney Museum but also by other important American museums as the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, the Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago and the Columbus Museum of Art. Structured in seven sections according to chronological order and theme, the Italian exhibition covers Hopper’s entire oeuvre, from his education, to his years as a student in Paris, up to his “classic” and best-known period of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, closing with the large, intense images of his later years. The show explores all of the artist’s favourite techniques: oil, watercolour and etching, and devotes special attention to the fascinating relationship between his preparatory drawings and his paintings: a vital aspect of his work that up till now has not been greatly explored in the exhibitions dedicated to him. The exhibition also exceptionally includes one of his Artist’s ledger Book, the famous ledgers he and his wife compiled, and which contain sketches of many of his oil paintings. The visitor will have the opportunity, thanks to a touch screen, to glance through it. The captivating layout designed by the team Master IDEA with the eye-catching, evocative settings is focused on the visitor’s interaction. The aim is to let visitors experience Hopper’s works as reconstructions of physical spaces, focusing above all on the architectural element. The audience enter the exhibition through an atmospheric nocturnal setting, with a reconstruction inspired by the bar of the famous painting Nighthawks, this entrance invites exhibition-goers to enter literally Hopper’s world and become part of the painting. The exhibition also features a photographic, biographical and historical component, tracing American history from the 1920s to the 1960s: the Depression, the Kennedys, the boom years. An opportunity for greater insight into today’s global recession and Barack Obama’s America. http://www.edwardhopper.it/?IDC=30 |
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A large amount of recent research and scholarship, along with numerous exhibitions and papers probing the life and career of Michelangelo Merisi, alias Caravaggio, have confirmed growing worldwide interest in this artist's painting and the pivotal role that painting has played in the history of art over the past four centuries. This is the backdrop and the mood that has spawned the idea for a new and ambitiously "simple" exhibition - an exciting and straightforward display devised on the basis of a stringent criterion and presented to the public in a tight rather than an anthological exhibit focusing exclusively on the artist's "capital" works; in other words, including only those works historically ascertained to be by the master's own hand. The decision to focus only on paintings known to be by Caravaggio himself has meant that we have excluded any works attributed to his "school" and have set aside, almost in a kind of temporary suspension, the "additional versions" and all of the questionable works debated by critics with often differing opinions throughout the 20th century. The end result is a consistent and stringent exhibition that sheds new light on the various stages in the development of Caravaggio's tortured artistic career - an exciting, crystal-clear display that distills and enhances the exceptional, indeed the unique, quality of his output. The exhibition will include many of Caravaggio's most representative works, including the Bacchus from Florence's Uffizi Gallery, the David With the Head of Goliath from the Borghese Gallery in Rome, the Musicians from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Lute Player from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Amor Vincit Omnia from the Staatliche Museum in Berlin, and numerous other masterpieces from many of the most important museums in Italy and around the world. The exhibition is designed in many ways to be a tribute to the unique quality of Caravaggio's work in this year in which celebrations are being held to mark the 400th anniversary of his death. The exhibition at the Scuderie del Quirinale is set to offer the public a new and stimulating opportunity to penetrate the very essence of the "terribly natural" painter, his revolutionary and astonishing naturalistic criterion, and his stubborn if questioning deference to the depiction of reality which no pattern or school could contain, which was solitary in its poetic greatness. The project, designed to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the great artist's death and enjoying the lofty patronage of the President of the Republic, has been developed under the aegis of the Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale of the City of Rome.
Link:http://english.scuderiequirinale.it
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