THE GETTY MUSEUM PAYS TRIBUTE TO BAROQUE PORTRAIT SCULPTURE OF BERNINI’S GENIUS

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the most relevant artist of all baroque art, the one who was able to embody and translate in images the ideals and thrills of his era, dominating undisputed the Roman artistic scene for more than sixty years, becomes “peace ambassador” between Italy and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. After various confrontations, ended at the beginning of the year, on the restitution by the US museum of stolen Italian masterpieces (the Getty displayed 40 pieces that came from the illegal market and therefore belonged to our country), the exhibition dedicated to Bernini is a ploy to sign a new chapter on cultural relations between Italy and the United States.

Since American artist Jeff Koons, during the late seventies, started exhibiting his first inflatable works, he has never left the footlights. Having reached very soon world celebrity, Koons has triggered countless debates within the contemporary art world and wherever he goes he is followed by a multitude of reporters, while his exhibitions are invaded by figures of the star system, billionaire collectors, art lovers and curious people attracted by this artist who has transformed his life into art creating an aureole of gossip around him.

Until 27th August, the city of Basel is hosting an extraordinary exhibition dedicated to French artist Robert Delaunay. Thanks to the curator Roland Wetzel, the Kunstmuseum of Basel has organized “Robert Delaunay: hommage à Blèriot,” an event that displays the eight compositions of the homonymous series, put together for the occasion with other masterpieces of Delaunay’s other series and with works of his contemporaries Vasilij Kandinskij, Fernand Lèger and futurist Luigi Russolo. Moreover, the Centre Pompidou of Paris has lent “Prismes èlectriques”, the painting that the artist’s wife, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, exposed at the Salon des indèpendants next to her husband’s “Homage à Blèriot”.

Streets crowded with strange creatures, a horse hanging from the ceiling, a miniature stadium; we are not talking about an adventure film or a leisure park, but about some of the ingredients of the greatest art exhibition. Sidney, spectacular metropolis of the Oceanic continent, in these days is turning into a theatre of contemporary art, opening up its sixteenth biennale.

translated by Giorgina Arcuri

Particularly famous for her provocative representation of the female body or her anatomic fragments, during her long career Kiki Smith has explored a wide range of subjects and themes, that vary from religion to folklore, passing through mythology, natural sciences, history of art and especially feminism. The American sculptress of German origins (she was born in Germany in 1954 but she has lived and worked in New York since the seventies) can be defined a conceptual artist, for her ability to analyze and examine the human form from its inside. All Kiki Smith’s oeuvre is founded on the intent to present the human body as a martyred body, a subject exhausted by the frantic pace of contemporary society.

From today until 7th September, the London National Gallery is dedicating to Italian divisionists an exhibition entitled “Radical Light: Italy’s Divisionist Painters 1891–1910.” It is one of the first exhibitions to be held outside Italy that explores this artistic period, by displaying more than fifty paintings realized by the most important divisionist masters such as Giovanni Segantini and Gaetano Previati. The exhibition will also present rare paintings lent by important private and public collections in Europe and North America.

translated by Giorgina Arcuri

2008 really seems to be the year dedicated to artist Mario Schifano. Ten years from his death, the Italian art system seems to be setting to work to celebrate this author who is considered by critics the greatest talent of Italian Pop Art, acclaimed as the spiritual heir to Andy Warhol and considered, together with Tano Festa and Franco Angeli, “the damned painter” who founded the Piazza del Popolo School, an essential reference point for Italian and European contemporary art.
Schifano’s figure can be considered a rather singular presence in the art panorama of the late twentieth century, for the variety and eclectic quality of his oeuvre, inclined to delving into the languages of modernity, as well as for his tormented life inspired to the idea of the myth of the artist.
His fame as the damned artist preceded him without him doing anything to elude it, actually Schifano continued stoking it up with the myth of the handsome and damned.

Turin is hosting the exhibition dedicated to the fascinating Japanese artist who, with his sophisticated style, has been able to communicate and provoke, becoming the symbol of a Japan that is changing, although it remains attached to its traditions.
The Araki Gold exhibition started in November, with its first stage in Rome that ended last February. The exhibition is now continuing in Turin where, after being hosted by the State Archive, more than 500 images will migrate during June and July to a provincial venue, to Villa Remmert (Ciriè).