MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI THE PAINTER
28 Piazza di Pietra presents from October 30th 2015 to Februrary 29th 2016 the exhibition “Michelangelo Antonioni the Painter”, curated by the Artist’s wife, Enrica Antonioni, and the director of the gallery, Francesca Anfosso. On display are the paintings of Michelangelo Antonioni, the recipient of an Honorary Academy Award in addition to winning all the major international cinematography prizes. This is the first time that Antonioni’s artworks will be exhibited in an art gallery. Only a few of these paintings were once on display for a month, in 2006, right in the Temple of Hadrian in Piazza di Pietra. The Artist loved and often spent time in this Piazza, where he also filmed some scenes from the film "The Eclipse".
"Painting was a great joy for him.-explains Enrica Antonioni- The time he spent painting seemed free of the torments that cinema could cause him, together with the satisfaction of knowing how to do the job he loved most, but which constantly challenged him. In his last years, from 2001, he decided to dedicate all the time he had left to painting. He spent all day, every day at his work table, absorbed in color, in shape, in silence, in the calmness of his breathing. The elegance of his gestures was, as always, disarming".
The artworks on display, all acrylic on canvas or cardboard canvas, are of an abstract nature and of various dimensions. They narrate the last phase of Antonioni’s life, in which he dedicated himself with passion and enthusiasm to an art different from the one which brought him to the highest levels of international prestige.
Throughout the course of the exhibition there will be events and presentations both in the gallery and in Piazza di Pietra, all linked in some way to the life and works of Michelangelo Antonioni.
"I feel admiration both in human and professional terms towards the Artist -says Francesca Anfosso- who has proven himself to be an accomplished Artist, capable of expressing himself and of creating emotional engagement using images with equal prowess, both in his painting and in his films. His artworks are an explosion of colors and shapes, of powerful impressions and styles; colorful and “joyous” they reveal an unexpected Antonioni. I am certain they wil) arouse in many people the same admiring emotion which I felt the first time I saw them in Michelangelo and Enrica's beautiful home in Bovara”.
In the text which accompanies the catalogue of the exhibition, Alberto Asor Rosa adds:
"Through painting, from his silence he wanted to bring forth his voice: clear, sharp, rich in infinite colors and numerous shapes, at times disturbed, but at times even happy".
