ART-PREVIEW:Show Case

The Collezione Maramotti consists of several hundred artworks that date from 1945 to the present, of which something more than two hundred are on permanent display as an in-depth presentation of a number of the central artistic tendencies, both Italian and international, of the second half of the 20th century. It consists primarily of paintings but it also holds sculptures and installations.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Collezione Maramotti Archive

In conjunction with the opening of the 2021 Fotografia Europea festival, Collezione Maramotti offers a new take on its permanent exhibition entitled “Show Case-Exhibiting the Archive”, through a selection of documents and materials from its library and archive. Stretching through the galleries a series of temporary vitrines showcase photos, papers, drawings, artists’ books, and ephemera from some of the artists on view, to provide broader context for their work and fresh perspective on the exhibition. The material related to Alighiero Boetti, Eliseo Mattiacci, Mario Schifano, Pino Pascali, Jannis Kounellis, Sergio Lombardo and Cesare Tacchi, on the first floor, shows the vibrant artistic ferment of the 1960s and ‘70s in Italy. Alighiero Boetti’s “Insicuro Noncurante” is a large book published in 1975 in an edition of just 41 signed, numbered copies. This precious portfolio of 81 plates, collected by Boetti himself, touches on many themes key to the artist’s vision. We are presenting several of these plates, including “Scrivere con la sinistra è disegnare”. The original sketch by Eliseo Mattiacci for “Trucioli e calamita” (1968-69) and several photos of other works by Mattiacci, presented alongside it at Galleria dell’Oca in 2004, show the artist’s idea of space as a web of energy fields. An X-ray of the surface of Mario Schifano’s “Manifesto 1960” (1960) shows the process through which the work was created: Schifano’s monochrome “screens” are not about stripping painting down so much as building it up, through suspended layers of communication. A series of photos from Plinio De Martiis’s gallery La Tartaruga, one of the busiest hubs of the Italian art scene in the 1960s, reflects the cultural ferment of the time, when Rome was a meeting ground for artists, writers, critics and intellectuals, on display are photos of: Pino Pascali, Jannis Kounellis, Sergio Lombardo and Cesare Tacchi. On the second floor, the energy and creativity of the New York painting scene in the ’80s and ’90s is described through documentation about the work of Eric Fischl, Julian Schnabel and Ellen Gallagher. Eric Fischl’s two large paintings “Birthday Boy” (1983) and “The Philosopher’s Chair” (1999) exemplify the voyeuristic, psychological gaze of this American artist, whose characters inhabit ambiguous, liminal spaces. Ephemera, articles and correspondence between the artist and Mario Diacono, who was showing them in his gallery at the time, offer a glimpse into their “genealogy of form” and symbolic references. Photos taken in Julian Schnabel’s Long Island studio in the 1980s capture several concrete stages in the creation of his famous “plate paintings” (two of which are exhibited in the collection), showing the New York artist’s ongoing penchant for technical experimentation. Ephemera, books, photos, and Ellen Gallagher’s own words, especially from a dialogue with Peter Halley published in 1997, reveal the impulses underlying Gallagher’s practice, which is deeply concerned with questions of race and the assimilation of Black people in American culture and society.

Photo: Biblioteca e Archivio d’Arte at Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Ph. Bruno Cattani

Info: Collezione Maramotti, via Fratelli Cervi 66, Reggio Emilia, Italy, Duration: 17/6-31/12/2021, Days & Hours: Thu-Fri 14:30-18:30, Sat-Sun 10:30-18:30, www.collezionemaramotti.org