The story of the friendship between two pivotal characters of Italian culture at the turn of the last world war, between anti-fascism and a new national identity, great painting and profound criticism
It is really difficult to find an artist who has elaborated a series of such high-level results in such different fields, also carrying out various activities of civil and social commitment. Carlo Levi, Turin, born at the very beginning of the last century (1902), was a painter important, he worked as screenwriter, costume designer, set designer and illustrator for cinema, wrote numerous books, starting with the masterpiece of the 20th century Christ stopped at Eboli (formidable in hybridizing, for a story about life during the sentence to confinement suffered for political reasons, literary genres such as novels, essays, prose art, mémoire, travel correspondence) to end with a flood of essays, plus it was doctor, politico (elected to Parliament for two terms) and journalist.
One of his main friends, besides the poet Eugenio Montale who hosted him in his Florentine home after his confinement, and a scholar of his work was the critic Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti. Lucchese eight years younger, also involved in politics, in 1948 he wrote a volume that cataloged all of Levi’s pictorial work until the previous year and then curated the fundamental 1977 exhibition, two years after the death of his friend, who lined up an impressive selection of works in Florence.
Carlo Levi 65. Portrait of Pier Paolo Pasolini
Their relationship was punctuated not only by meetings and contacts, but also by letters and documents, which testify to a common adhesion to anti-fascism, a common desire to modernize the country, a shared research to deepen the artistic experience individual and collective.
On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the creation of the Ragghianti Study Center Foundation, an important exhibition is dedicated to this link in the rooms of the monumental complex of San Micheletto, where it is based. Levi and Ragghianti. A friendship between painting, politics and literature it reconstructs the events, the circumstances and the identity knots of their relationship, the theoretical questions of a historical-artistic nature and the practical ones of a politics of the arts.
Over one hundred works of art (numerous drawings and about eighty paintings), letters, typewritten texts by Ragghianti, autographs of the critic’s monograph with annotations by Levi, sketches for costumes, documents, various editions of books, unpublished photographs and videos are proposed divided into six sections, from “The training” to “A pictorial itinerary in the choices of Levi and Ragghianti”, passing through “The political struggle, the clandestinity, the refuge in Florence”, “Wartime drawings”, ” The Christ from confinement in Lucania to the book “and” Carlo Levi in the cinema “.
Carlo Levi 62. Portrait of Anna Magnani, 1954
The pictorial itinerary shows the evolution of the Piedmontese, son of the Jewish good bourgeoisie and his sister socialist leader Claudio Treves. From the beginnings oriented by dating and friendship with Felice Casorati to the Parisian trip, which marked his colouristics in a post-impressionist direction, his art was always oriented towards a – more or less – magical realism (some important works by Levi are exhibited at Royal Palace of Milan in the exhibition dedicated to Magic Realism), but in every direct and vital, representative and social expression. He ended up being criticized in the post 60s phase because of a progressive fatigue and repetitiveness, which was the way to accuse him of his consistency in not adhering to the new artistic trends in vogue.
Telling reality in a lyrically transfigured way it was always the expressive creed of Carlo Levi, who, thanks to a dense and sinuous brushstroke, was able to attract the viewer almost into his landscapes, to make him converse with the characters of his portraits, to bring his still lifes to life, to do so caress her nudes. In particular, he was an exceptional portraitist: on display, together with the self-portraits, those of his mother and brother, of his friends Ragghianti and Montale, of the writers can be admired. Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino and Manlio Cancogni, of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the actress Anna Magnani.
Carlo Levi 3. The mother and the sister, 1926
During the confinement in Aliano in Basilicata (the Eboli of the book) deepened the intense relationship with nature as a symbol of society, as the bearer of a atavistic culture not to give up. The essay is paradigmatic Fear of painting, placed as an appendix to Ragghianti’s catalog, in which he condemned abstractionism because it is far from man and his instances, because it lacks that real that must be the object of representation, which otherwise becomes only a symbol of the dismay and fear that pervade the modern thinking in the face of nothing that advances.
Levi and Ragghianti. A friendship between painting, politics and literature
Ragghianti Foundation – via San Micheletto n. 3, Lucca
until March 20
opening hours: 10/13 and 14.30 / 18.30; Monday closed
tickets: € 5; reduced € 3 (groups, under 18, students, teachers, agreements); free for the disabled and companion, under 6, group leaders, Tuscan university students, soldiers, journalists, tourist guides)