The Etruscan Shadow, the visionaries Art stories outside the dogmas – time.news

by time news
from STEFANO BUCCI

At the Doebbing Palace in Sutri until November 20, the exhibition “Eccentrics and solitary”, conceived by Vittorio Sgarbi: an ideal journey into “rebellious” creativity

Those of the eccentrics and the loners are, after all, only two different ways of being out of the chorus, of not being trapped in a scheme or a definition, those of the eccentrics and the loners. The exhibition that opens today in Sutri, Viterbo, at the Museum of Palazzo Doebbing (conceived by Vittorio Sgarbi, produced by Contemplazioni, sponsored by Intesa Sanpaolo) seems to want to welcome both of them already from the title, Quirky and lonely, in fact (until November 20). One way, as Sgarbi explains (who is also the mayor of Sutri), “to avoid trends and schools, to favor individual, unusual and rare experiences, to define the character of an obstinate research without dogma”. An ideal journey that unites apparently very distant experiences (but united by the same diversity), those of surrealists with a metaphysical soul or visionaries on the hunt for contemporary myths.



In fact, very particular creative paths are intertwined in Sutri
(more or less already kissed by the fortune of critics or of the market): Fortunato Duranti (1787-1863), Domenico Rambelli (1886-1972), Gianfilippo Usellini (1903-1971), Giannetto Fieschi (1921-2010), Lorenzo Tornabuoni ( 1934-2004), Vittorio Pescatori (1937-2019), Gaetano Pesce (1939), Wainer Vaccari (1949), Massimo Rao (1950-1996), Marco Lodola (1955), Federico Maria Sardelli (1963), Grazia Cucco (1965 ), Giovanni di Carpegna (1966), Stefano Maffessanti (1975), Alessandra Matté (1978), Adriano Fida (1978), Alessandra Maxaculi (1983), the AMeBe group (Alessandra Mantovani-Eleonora Barbareschi).



And perhaps precisely to trace a path that is in any case defined the exhibition of Palazzo Doebbing opens with a timeless universal treasure

(also eccentric and solitary) re-emerged for the occasion from the mists into which Covid had precipitated it after the exhibition at the Archaeological Museum of San Gimignano (Siena) which in 2019 had certified its discovery and importance. This is the
Soul of San Gimignano
as Sgarbi defines it
(
also known as Hinthial o l’
Shadow of San Gimignano
)
perfect antagonist of that



Shadow of the Evening
so nicknamed by Gabriele d’Annunzio who was fascinated by it: an Etruscan bronze 64 cm high dating back to the third century BC, an elongated and elegant male figure with delicate facial features that suggest an author of considerable skill who looked at the Hellenistic world , a shape that closely resembles theShadow now preserved in the Guarnacci Etruscan Museum in Volterra (Pisa) but also certain Men by Alberto Giacometti.



Protagonist of the exhibition, the
Offeror

(another of the names of the statuette derived from the fact that the man represented holds a “navel” patera in his hand, a cup with a bulge in the center used during ritual sacrifices) is confirmed here as one of the most important archaeological discoveries of recent years ( the statuette had been found during the restoration work of a house on the hills of Torraccia di Chiusi, between San Gimignano and Valdelsa) thanks to its marked eyes, its large nose, its dimple in the chin, its hairstyle underlined by strand for lock. Magical and beautiful, the
Soul of San Gimignano
here weaves a very successful dialogue with theEphesus of Sutri, the bronze of about 80 centimeters dating back to the early imperial period now located on the ground floor of Palazzo Doebbing and an integral part of the exhibition.

The exhibition opens with three painters who make their art a contemporary mythology. Wainer Vaccari’s link with Nordic culture “produces landscapes and situations that resemble still images of ancient legends, dressed in modern clothes”. The characters of Vaccari, to whom the Galleria Civica di Trento has recently dedicated a large retrospective, “are mad heroes, serious and concentrated, darkly ironic” and therefore once again eccentric and solitary. Vaccari’s myth of the North dialogues in turn with the Greek-Latin myth to which the works of Adriano Fida look. Its protagonists are muses and divinities, who lose nothing of their archaic mystery, on the contrary: like the oracle of Delphi, Fida neither says nor hides, but hints through unsolved symbols. Even the works of Lorenzo Tornabuoni “have to do with myth – assures Vittorio Sgarbi -, not to imitate it, but to create it: he squeezes the secret essences of Sabaudia, and shows us the figures of rowers as icons of delicate solitude”.

Ancient and contemporary mix continuouslyin the universe of eccentric-loners, a universe constantly out of the box and beyond the schemes, united by a dreamlike and perturbing vision of reality. As for Grazia Cucco “with her surrealism that is never artificial, always spontaneous, populated by myriads of creatures that intertwine with the plots of nature, revealing its vices and virtues, a succession of peasants and insects, flowers and fruits, nuns and animals are the visions of the unconscious, of its fantasies and disturbances ». Or as for Giannetto Fieschi, protagonist until tomorrow at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Villa Croce in Genoa and at the Gallery of Modern Art in Genoa Nervi of the exhibition
Giannetto Fieschi. The experience of art
: in turn «capable of delving into the psyche, and searching under the stratifications of everyday experiences universal archetypes».

The uniqueness remains (of talent as well as style) to act as a glue between the expressive languages ​​of these eccentric-loners. The uniqueness of Gaetano Pesce’s excellent design (“something of Leonardo’s talent lives in him: proudly Italian, also, above all, in the new world where even Leonardo would certainly have gone if the planes he was conceiving had allowed him”) and the silhouettes very colorful by Marco Lodola («perspex, plexiglass and neon that reject an aseptic conceptualism to live rather of a swing sound»). And it is no coincidence that the journey ends with Gianfilippo Usellini and his contemporary fairy tales impregnated with arcane, masks, metaphors “that invite us to go beyond appearances, in search of the angels and demons that hide within each of us “. To finally find ourselves again eccentric and lonely.

April 29, 2022 (change April 29, 2022 | 09:30)

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