Distributed between Palazzo Magnani and the Cloisters of San Pietro (RE), the Palazzo Magnani Foundation proposes, through an exhibition, a fascinating and unprecedented journey through the centuries, to understand how much the Decoration and the Ornament tell about us and the world.
The exhibition – promoted by the Palazzo Magnani Foundation, in collaboration with the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, the Province of Reggio Emilia, the Emilia Romagna Region and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism – traces some of the many aspects in which the action is expressed ornamental through over 200 works, coming from important private collections and from national and international museum institutions.
The exhibition intends to investigate the origins and developments of the multifaceted marriage between daily life, art and decoration and then to deal in detail with the experiences of so much twentieth-century and new millennium art in which the themes of the Ornament were again put back into game.
Through the various sections that touch on various themes: from nature, to technique, to craftsmanship, even local thanks to the Ars Canusina, to its differences between the various cultures of the world, without forgetting writing and calligraphy. It continues with an excursion into the art of the 1800s and 1900s, which made the field of confrontation and confrontation, ending with contemporaneity and music with the theme of the “arabesque“, in particular in authors such as Claude Debussy, who used the term as the title of one of his famous compositions.
The “What a wonderful world” exhibition will be an opportunity to learn about the extraordinary heritage of works and testimonies preserved in the area between Reggio Emilia, Parma, Piacenza, Modena and Bologna, from which many of the exhibited works come. This is divided between the two exhibition sites of Palazzo Magnani and the Chiostri di San Pietro: in the first it will be possible to appreciate the story characterized by ancient and historicized works of art, with suggestive forays into the contemporary field aimed at highlighting the legacies and the continuous references, present over the centuries, among the artistic forms. In the seat of the Cloisters of San Pietro, instead, the relationship and the weights are reversed, with contemporary art being the protagonist, from time to time flanked by ancient or modern pieces.
The Palazzo Magnani Foundation also confirms the attention to people with physical and mental disabilities, in close collaboration with the Reggio Emilia City Without Barriers Project, enriching the exhibition with a series of reproductions of some works to make them accessible to all.

For further informations: Fondazione Palazzo Magnani 

Cesare Zavattini died on October 13, 1989, just thirty years ago. Three decades seem to be a good time to analyze such a complex, original and passionate character as Zavattini was. To him – in the various guises of a filmmaker, writer, cartoonist, a person with a strong political commitment – many studies have been dedicated in Italy and in the world. However, one aspect remained, if not in shadow, certainly less investigated and that is what the Panizzi Library and the Cesare Zavattini Archive have studied in recent years: the role of Za abroad, in times, its own, impregnated by the climate of the Cold War and ideological conflicts. A role that has been crucial in promoting salient aspects of the Italian culture of the second half of the twentieth century and in particular of neorealism, in the European horizon and more generally in the international scene, thanks to its intense participation in conferences, congresses, conferences, training courses in Decolonized or developing countries, to collaborations with magazines and film co-productions.

The exhibition project is based on two guidelines: on the one hand it investigates the activity carried out in the various artistic areas (cinema, literature, painting, etc.), in the geographical areas (both in Europe and on the New Continent); on the other, explores particular themes and events, such as the journey (for example in the footsteps of Van Gogh), peace, relations with the Latin American writer Garcia Marquez and with Jewish cosmopolitan environments.

In the exhibition at Palazzo da Mosto, documentary and iconographic materials will be presented that tell all the activities and the network of relationships woven by this eclectic personality: thousands of original, typewritten and manuscript papers, handwritten notes, along with photographs, videos, posters and books .

The exhibition is enriched by some of its inseparable objects, the typewriter, the Basque, the travel bag, in addition to the 150 paintings from the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, which are part of the famous collection of 8X10 that Cesare Zavattini had collected during the meetings with some of the most important twentieth-century artists. Among the many will be exhibited Giacomo Balla, Antonio Ligabue, Alberto Burri, Enrico Baj, Renato Guttuso, Giorgio De Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, Bruno Munari, Claudio Parmiggiani, Gillo Dorfles, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Mario Sironi, Alberto Magnelli and then again Pietro Consagra, Roberto Crippa, Fortunato Depero, Filippo De Pisis, Gianni Dova, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mimmo Rotella and many others.

The last room of the exhibition will be dedicated to the unpublished shots of one of the greatest Italian photographers, Gianni Berengo Gardin, made on the occasion of the work that re-proposes the “Luzzara” by Cesare Zavattini in the photo book “Un Paese twenty anni anni”.

At the end of the exhibition, a conference focused on the international dimension of Zavattini is scheduled for Saturday, February 29, 2020, in Reggio Emilia in the aula magna of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. During the initiative, the research carried out by the work group of the project “Zavattini beyond the borders” and published in the exhibition catalog will be presented.

For further information: Fondazione Palazzo Magnani 

During the month of September, Parma will open its doors to foodies: the series of events linked to Gastronomic September begins. The excellent food and wine of Parma will be the protagonists of a whole month of gourmet themed events. The program includes itineraries between art, taste, and music to discover the green corners of the city. The historic center of Parma will be transformed into a charming outdoor gourmet restaurant because of the event “Cena dei Mille” for a thousand guests. The common thread will be the rediscovery of the tastes of the Parma gastronomic tradition.

The chefs of Chef To Chef will make the appetizer and those of Parma Quality Restaurants will take care of the first and second course. The guest star will be Norbert Niederkofler, who will work alongside the Parma Quality Restaurants team. The tri-star chef, a proponent of the “Cook The Mountain” philosophy will prepare the dessert. The “Cena dei Mille” will have a beneficial purpose: the funds raised will be donated to Emporio Solidale Parma, which assists over a thousand families in difficulty.

Thanks to the collaboration of Destination Tourist Emilia, the guests of the “Cena dei Mille” can also enjoy typical products from the territories of Piacenza and Reggio Emilia. Through the Gourmet Gardens, you can discover the enchanting gardens of which Parma is scattered. Some of those are private and normally not open to the public. It’s an unmissable opportunity to discover secret corners of the ducal city while enjoying quality music and enjoying gourmet gastronomic proposals

Guided tours to discover excellences like Parma Ham DOP are then organized, with the Festival and the “Finestre Aperte” weekends, and tomato, the protagonist of the “Tomaca Festival”. Not forgetting pasta, fish preserves, and other dairy products. The “September Gastronomic” calendar will then be completed with show cooking, talk shows, book presentations, cultural and entertainment moments and educational workshops organized by the University of Parma and Verdi Off, and Giocampus and Madegus – Maestri del Gusto.

Info: www.parmacityofgastronomy.it

On the occasion of the European Under 21 Football Championship, from June 19 to September 8, 2019, a new exhibition on this sport will be held in Reggio Emilia which aims to highlight the connections between the arts and sports world from the end of the 19th century to the contemporary.

Some of the greatest innovations in history come at the end of an era and the nineteenth century ended with various “inventions” whose effects are still felt in our present. In particular, in December 1895 the official date of the birth of the cinema is set and in the same year, the first Venice Biennale is inaugurated. Just three years later, in 1898, the title of champion of Italy was awarded for the first time.
They seem like events that cannot be connected to each other, yet clear signs of the appearance of a new cultural and sporting era. It is no coincidence that the first artistic avant-gardes of the twentieth century, particularly Futurism, have often represented the game of football. There is more than one clue, therefore, that sees them not so far away, football and art.

Here begins the story of “the art of scoring”. This is a parade in twentieth-century Italian art in over 60 works from public museums and foundations. In the exhibition protagonists and languages ​​alternate in which football plays the game as a protagonist. At times surprising, there are several big names of the twentieth century, such as the futurist Fortunato Depero and the realist Renato Guttuso. We then move from pop art to photography, the vignette, the figurines, discovering a surprising link between these disciplines.

For the occasion, there are also some works of great visual impact: the luminous installation by Marco Lodola formed by twelve stylized footballers, each with their own national team shirt. Eleven are the “figurines” painted by Andrea Gualandri from Reggio or an ideal Under 21 All-Star. On the subject of figurines, history recalls that a very young Wainer Vaccari designed the famous “icon” for Panini or the overthrow of Carlo Parola. Today a well-known painter, Vaccari revisits for the exhibition that image entered the historical memory of Italian football.

Info: Fondazione Palazzo Magnani

From 12 April to 9 June 2019, FOTOGRAFIA EUROPEA returns in Reggio Emilia. It is the international cultural festival dedicated to contemporary photography, promoted by Fondazione Palazzo Magnani and Comune di Reggio Emilia.

Bonding. Intimacy, relationships, new worlds is the theme of the 2019 edition of the Fotografia Europea festival, curated by the Scientific Committee of Fondazione Palazzo Magnani with Walter Guadagnini’s Art Direction.
The fourteenth edition talks about the human relations: from sentimental relationships, which are more private in nature, to social ones, which naturally mostly take place in the public sphere.

The exhibitions will be present at Palazzo Magnani, Palazzo da Mosto, Synagogue, Chiostri di San Pietro, Spazio Scapinelli, Chiostri di San Domenico, Spazio Gerra and Biblioteca Panizzi.

Fotografia Europea, as every year, offers the possibility to open unpublished places of the city of Reggio Emilia. This year we will discover the underground of the Valli Theatre and the Church and the cloister of San Niccolò and the Baptistery.

For further information: www.fotografiaeuropea.it

Two hundred years after its birth, Reggio Emilia at the Palazzo dei Musei, dedicates an extensive retrospective to Antonio Fontanesi, an artist from Reggio Emilia, the undisputed protagonist of Italian 19th-century painting, an extraordinary interpreter of the novelties of the romantic landscape, a restless man in life and an innovative experimenter in painting .

Promoted by the Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia, in collaboration with the Turin Museums Foundation-Modern Art Gallery and the Ricci Oddi Modern Art Gallery of Piacenza, the exhibition is organized in partnership with the Emilia Romagna Region – Institute for Artistic Heritage Cultural and Natural, the Cassa di Risparmio P. Manodori Foundation of Reggio Emilia, Destinazione Emilia, Unioncamere Emilia Romagna, Chamber of Commerce of Reggio Emilia, APT Servizi, with the art bonus contribution of CAR SERVER, CREDEM, IREN.

The exhibition – curated by Virginia Bertone, Elisabetta Farioli, Claudio Spadoni – in addition to reconstructing the artist’s journey through the most important works by Fontanesi, intends to offer a new critical contribution to his knowledge by showing the influence his painting had in artists who after him recognized themselves in their particular approach to nature and the landscape, suspended between the need for representation of the true and the urgency to express their most intimate emotions.

On display, the exhibition of the most important paintings by Antonio Fontanesi from important museums and Italian collections will be compared with the production of the artists that critics have linked with his production, identifying possible reasons for inspiration in a chronological span from the years Eighties of the nineteenth comes up to the sixties of the twentieth century.
The relationships with symbolist and divisionist culture will be documented through works by Vittore Grubicy, Leonardo Bistolfi, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Angelo Morbelli but also his recovery in the 1920s by Carlo Carrà, Felice Casorati, Arturo Tosi. The last section will be dedicated to the interesting critical interpretations of the fifties by Roberto Longhi and then by Francesco Arcangeli. The latter in fact, in identifying a continuity between the modern conception of art and the great nineteenth-century tradition, places Fontanesi in the evolution of a naturalism that after the war arrives to Ennio Morlotti, Mattia Moreni, Pompilio Mandelli, going as far as the material researches of Alberto Burri.

Info: www.musei.re.it/antonio-fontanesi-e-la-sua-eredita

From the harsh reconstruction of the country after the devastation of the Second World War to the resounding economic boom of the 1960s. This is the historical period narrated in the great photographic exhibition. 15 years in which a destroyed and exhausted country succeeded in overcoming the traumas of war giving rise to a tumultuous economic, social, imaginary development, admired throughout the world. An unrepeatable, exciting and contradictory moment, a story so intense that it is still a significant legacy of our present.

The exhibition “Il sorpasso“, an obvious reference to the iconic film of an era by Dino Risi, is the portrait – one frame after another – of the country when it enters forever in modernity: political life and private life, the struggles for work and costume revolutions, the construction of highways and the blossoming of an imaginary celluloid, the change of the landscape and the mutation of the face of a country that has been immobile for decades. To unite everything, the idea of ​​Italy that accelerates and gains positions even with traits of aggressiveness and vulgarity, as the mad race of the film Lancia Aurelia teaches. It is an Italy that surpasses its archaic and backward traits, going ahead despite enormous problems that often remain unresolved, the consequence of a development that is too fast, often unbalanced.

Organized by the Istituto Luce-Cinecittà and promoted by the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Parma in collaboration with the CSAC – Center for Studies and Communication Archive of the University of Parma, it is curated by Enrico Menduni and Gabriele D’Autilia.

Info: www.comune.parma.it/cultura/evento/it-IT/mostra-il-sorpasso-palazzo-del-governatore-parma.aspx

For the first time since the opening to the public of the Maramotti Collection in October 2007, ten rooms on the second floor of the permanent exhibition will be reorganized to accommodate some of the projects presented in the first ten years of opening: Enoc Perez (2008), Gert & Uwe Tobias (2009), Jacob Kassay (2010), Krištof Kintera (2017), Jules de Balincourt (2012), Alessandro Pessoli (2011), Evgeny Antufiev (2013), Thomas Scheibitz (2011), Chantal Joffe (2014), Alessandra Ariatti (2014).
This series of solo exhibitions offers an overview, albeit partial, of the work in progress carried out by the Collection through the invitation to Italian and international artists – at a particular moment in the development of their research – to create a new body of works to be presented at public and which subsequently became part of the estate.
The path winds through different projects, in which the constant interest in the evolution of the pictorial language is accompanied by an attention to new expressive forms and a question about the status of the work of art, always with a strong tension towards the future, a pre-vision through which to catch the traces.
This re-arrangement – which represents a moment of reflection on the Collection and its progress – is accompanied by a temporary exhibition, on the ground floor, of documents, books and works from our archives and library, living places of knowledge and study. These materials enhance, through some significant examples, the vitality of the process of creating works of art and the permeable connections between the different collection nuclei of the Collection.

Info: www.collezionemaramotti.org/it/dettaglio-mostra/-/rehang/263482

With In the Woods the Waterfall is Rushing, the first solo show in Italy, Tilo & Toni present the latest series of works Im Walde rauscht der Wasserfall (In the Woods the Waterfall is Rushing), composed of unique pieces of baryta paper, created with an experimental mix of techniques, through the direct intervention of the artists on the prints.

For Im Walde rauscht der Wasserfall Tilo & Toni worked with different materials, combining photographs, drawings and objects of various kinds, recombined into images and photo collages. Inspired by the practice of artists such as TONK, Man Ray, Bill, Patsch, Hartung or Braeckmann, the works on display are the result of scratched negatives, overexpositions and drawings created with light, directly inside the darkroom.

Without following a precise thematic line, the series wants to be a reflection on the nature and on the process of creating images, thought by the artists as an infinitely interconnected matter, the result of a constant contamination and appropriation.
Working on processuality and on the construction of images, with irony, ingenuity and provocation, through various and multifaceted visual approaches, has always been part of the research and practice of Tilo & Toni. With Im Walde rauscht der Wasserfall the artists recall a typical imaginary of the romantic era, evoked not only by the reference to the natural world of the title, but above all by a deep attention to the manual gesture and the interaction with the materials.

TILO & TONI is an artistic duo founded in 2015 in Siegen in Germany. Both members, after studying sculpture, painting, photography and graphics at the University of Siegen, obtained a Master’s degree at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.

Venue of the exhibition will be the Metronom cultural association, where an inauguration will also be held Saturday 2 March 2019, 7.00 pm Dates 2 March – 27 April 2019 Hours Tuesday-Saturday 14-19 and by appointment. Free admission.

Info: www.metronom.it/ita/mostre-future-dettaglio.php/id_cat=215

Saturday 23 February at 5 pm will be inaugurated at SPAZIO DANTE in the time Antini 1 (lateral of borgo Antini) in Parma the exhibition “… in silenzio” by Luca Compiani.

Graduated in languages ​​and, always fond of painting, he left in the nineties from a figurative sensibility, he arrived at an informal expressiveness at the end of 2005.
In this circumstance it is the precise intention of the Parmesan painter to highlight the meditative nature (hence the title of the exhibition) which has been common to all his works for about ten years.
These are still lifes of different origins (from those “frontal and flat” inspired by the fruit basket of Caravaggio, to others in which flowers and objects seem to find space in almost unreal perspectives) in whose evocative power the prof. Giovanni Ferrari, author of the introductory note, sees an opportunity for positive transformation of ourselves.