2023-05-09 12:06:23
From 17 May in Rome the exhibition curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Luigia Leonardelli, the first with Alessandro Giuli as president
No, this won’t be an exhibition… There are many shopkeepers around, many window dressers who produce works and set up exhibitions. I say this with a lot of respect for their work. But I’m not the type who creates a painting, I say this to make myself understood, Morandi-style to hang on the wall. I have this absurd habit of coming to my studio every day chasing an emotion to try to amaze, to amaze myself. It doesn’t mean that he’s capable of doing it, mind you… Am I a poet? Maybe you were. A short pause, then a very rapid sentence. For the American critics they said of me that I am the greatest artist of the twentieth century. They said it and wrote it to them. Not me. A brief ironic smile plays down everything.
Enzo Cucchi is wearing one of his iron-grey three-button suits, impeccably cut, which have long been inseparable from his identity image like the dark sweater. He’s finalizing the details for Enzo Cucchi/ The poet and the magician, a portrait of him (obviously the word exhibition does not appear in the presentation materials) that the Maxxi – National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome will exhibit in its Gallery 4 from 17 May until 24 September, curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, director of Maxxi Arte, and by Luigia Leonardelli in collaboration with the Enzo Cucchi Archive curated by her son Alessandro. The journey into his work contains traces of his roots in the Marches (the same as Scipio, Osvaldo Licini, Gino De Dominicis), then of his very fortunate landing in the United States in 1980 greeted with enthusiasm by the critics, of his return to Rome . An anthology of creativity expressed with multiple means, as Cucchi himself wrote: Poetry and painting are identical. The problem is strangely the same: a question of iconography, of the image of the world. It is a matter of freezing the image and instantly synthesizing it, in any way.
The story of Maxxi will host a multi-disciplinary and multi-material Cucchi whole. Only a few quick suggestions among works suspended from the ceiling, or projected outside, or placed in mid-air: small and large sculptures (the entrance with small cherubs in polychrome marble that transform faces into skulls), the bronzes (Religion of 2013), large-format paintings by Cucchi narrator of myths and of Rome (Snow miracle, 1986), then paper: artists’ books, catalogues, engravings, typographic experiments. Theatrical scenography. The broad chariot de Giotto’s chariot of 1990. Finally a Cathedral made of sheets and the artist’s farewell in verse on the wall of the large window that closes Gallery 4: Painting gathers the weight of things / A painting is a warm thing/ It can be seen from afar that you hate painting / Show and die.
An itinerary conceived as if it were Cucchi’s work studio or mental space. Alessandro Giuli, president of Maxxi says: Enzo Cucchi is a multifaceted figure, free from any style, who has been able to make the aptitude for freedom of expression his exclusive hallmark. His works take us on a journey through founding myths, references to the tradition of miracles, references to ancient techniques, evidence of his continuous shaping of matter like an alchemist. In fact Giuli recounts: For the Maxxi he conceived an engaging and poetic exhibition project that completely redesigns the exhibition spaces by offering new perspectives, not only on his work, but also on the space that hosts it, creating a continuous relationship between the works on display and the viewer. Giuli concludes, working with the artist is not easy but a rewarding adventure: I like his unique character, beyond good and evil. Cucchi himself beyond good and evil. a provocateur, shady and sublime, and he is absolutely right when he argues that talent is amoral.
Speaking of painting Cucchi reveals, recounting the appointment at Maxxi: I haven’t touched a brush for a year but every day I come to my studio and first of all I need to clean my head of the ghosts that pass through it. An open box-container, in the vast environment in which he works behind Piazza Navona (strictly only in the afternoon after lunch) hosts small assemblages, fragments of ideas, ideas for future works, a sort of notes that have become objects. He knows he is loved by many young artists: Yes, I know, I realize, there is a relationship of trust. Perhaps the meeting of many small solitudes, or for the common melancholy, or for a thousand other things, who knows. For those who have followed the events of contemporary art in Italy at the end of the last century, it is inevitable to ask about the Transavantgarde, a movement theorized by Achille Bonito Oliva who included Cucchi in 1979 in a list of seven artists who made the group’s media fortune. He smiles again: I really don’t know, ask Achille, he knows what the Transavantgarde is. a definition of a historical moment: before there were others and then others followed….
As for the twentieth century, Cucchi has his predilections: According to me Pier Paolo Pasolini and Paul VI were two giants, two great protagonists. The Pope’s speech to the men of the Red Brigades is a courageous and excellent intellectual. He uses the word “men” … a splendid passage. And then our thoughts turn to Giovanni Pozzi, another man of faith, a Capuchin father and art scholar, author of the famous essay Adelphi The painted word which for Cucchi was the compass to express himself in Santa Maria degli Angeli on Monte Tamaro in Switzerland, designed by Mario Botta, in particular for the twenty-two panels with the metaphors attributed to the Madonna in popular culture and the litanies of Pozzi.
A different appointment from the usual exhibitions, even for Maxxi. Cucchi admits: It took Bartolomeo Pietromarchi’s trust and great courage, for all of this, it’s not easy to work in a certain way. Mine, let’s say. Pietromarchi himself explains: There is a common sensitivity towards some values, in particular towards that of freedom. Cucchi is the embodied, human expression of freedom of expression: this is why he is so loved by young artists. He constantly breaks the patterns and certainties he has acquired: an enormous incentive to work with him. Maxxi is an institution and like all institutions it has its own rules: this time Maxxi follows other rules, we strongly wanted to build this appointment together with Enzo Cucchi following its spirit. I’m sure it will amaze many because it will be a completely new, different way of “seeing” the Maxxi.
Scheduled until September 24th
Enzo Cucchi/ The poet and the magician scheduled in Galleria 4 of the Maxxi (Rome, via Guido Reni 4a) from 17 May to 24 September. The exhibition dedicated to Cucchi (Morro d’Alba, Ancona, 1949) curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, director of Maxxi Arte, and by Luigia Leonardelli in collaboration with the Enzo Cucchi Archive curated by the artist’s son, Alessandro. The solo exhibition is the first of Maxxi with the new presidency entrusted, since December 2022, to Alessandro Giuli
In June Out of everything
At the end of June, a new appointment at Maxxi with All out, exhibition of the permanent collection created and told from a completely different point of view, linked to the concept of storage, and with new acquisitions including an installation created by Emilio Isgr and Mario Botta and dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Constitution of the Italian Republic.
May 9, 2023 (change May 9, 2023 | 12:01)
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