Pop invasion in Villa dei Capolavori! From September 10 to December 11 2016, Magnani Rocca Foundation, seats in Parma, hosts an important Italian Pop Art exhibition, composed of around seventy works, received on loan from important public institutes and prestigious private collections.

The exhibition intends to present an articulated and innovative reading of the events that ushered in the beginning and the spread of an “Italian way” of Pop Art, perfectly in harmony with the analogous experiences grown abroad, but at the same time linguistically autonomous from American and European models of those same years.

To underline the specificity of the Italian type, the exhibition starts with two exemplar works, part of the Foundation’s collection: a Giorgio de Chirico’s “Piazza d’Italia” and an Alberto Burri’s “Sacco”, two prime, historical sources of the Italian approach to contemporaneity, figuration and object. In fact, at first, critics have indicated a “neo-metaphysic” season, concerning works made by Mario Schifano or Tano Festa. Schifano himself will honour explicitly Giacomo Balla and Futurism movement in two pictorial series, central for his artistic development. The exhibition then moves forward with painters evaluated as precursors of Pop language, a series of authors who, after the Second World War, have developed the theme of a new figurative landscape, in a country that was trying to overcome war’s pains and facing towards new, unknown life styles, able to suggest, indeed, also new images. Gianni Bertini, Enrico Baj, Mimmo Rotella, Fabio Mauri, the first to catch the new cultural climate, as well as the new social mood, that was going to mature during the ’50s. These artists’ works find their place, in terms of style and period, close to American neo-dada ones, as Jasper Johns e Robert Rauschenberg’s, or coeval French “Nouveau Rèalisme” exponents’ works. 

At the end of the ’50s, also authors as Schifano, Renato Mambor, Gianfranco Baruchello, reflect on the themes of painting’s screen and objectivity, building the bases to develop the real and true Italian Pop Art golden season, from 1960 to 1966. A period of an extraordinary artistic fervour, that involves the whole peninsula, finding its nerve centres in Milan and Rome, not excluding other spreading places, extremely significant, as Turin,  Tuscany, cities where mostly Pop tendencies flowed.

In this section there will be exposed masterpieces made by Mimmo Rotella and Enrico Baj, by Roman authors, convened in “Scuola di Piazza del Popolo” label, Schifano, Festa, Mambor, Mauri, then Franco Angeli, Umberto Bignardi, Mario Ceroli, Giosetta Fioroni, Sergio Lombardo, Cesare Tacchi, Claudio Cintol; pieces made by artists who work in Milan, as Valerio Adami, Lucio Del Pezzo, Piero Manzoni, Emilio Tadini, Antonio Fomez, from Turin Piero Gilardi, Aldo Mondino, Michelangelo Pistoletto and from Tuscany Roberto Barni, Adolfo Natalini, Gianni Ruffi, Roberto Malquori.

An analysis ending with the presentation of another crucial phenomenon in Italian Pop language evolution, that uses mass culture’s images and elements, to create an extremely politicized art, starting from 1966 until the first years of the 70’s. An art reflecting the new social mood, widespread all over the world at the end of the decade: in this section will be placed works created by artists already exposed in the previous galleries, like Schifano, Angeli, Bertini, but especially exponents of ”critic figuration”, like Giangiacomo Spadari, Paolo Baratella, Fernando De Filippi, Sergio Sarri, Umberto Mariani, Bruno di Bello or Franco Sarnari. These artists nowadays show themselves as an additional, original italian contribution to “popism” diffusion in an international range. The particular that transforms this exhibition into an authentic unicum, unrepeatable in the expositional – not just national – panorama, is the possibility to admire a series of sculptures inside Villa dei Capolavori’s extraordinary galleries, Luigi Magnani’s historical habitation, father of Magnani Rocca Foundation. Gino Marotta’s animals in methacrylate, Pino Pascali’ sculptures, Mario Ceroli’s woods and Gianni Ruffi’s “Prima televisione a colori” (“First Colour Television”) dialogue with furniture and paintings inside the Foundation, activating a magnificent comparison between classic world and popular culture, proper of the Seventies. Also a splendid and extremely rare Domenico Gnoli’s paint, great artist dead very young, coming from an important private collection, converses with antique masterpieces of the Foundation.

Painting and sculptures are accompanied by some significant design objects of those years, besides editorial and discographical pieces, that allowed visitors to concentrate on the cultural spirit of this period – crucial point in rejuvenation of italian culture, on a international take – and a direct comparison between new mass culture, analysed in those years by important intellectuals as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Umberto Eco. The exhibition is curated by Stefano Roffi and Walter Guadagnini – author of important surveys of the argument, as “Pop Art UK 1956-1972”, “Pop Art Italia 1958-1968”, both set in Galleria Civica in Modena, “Pop Art 1956-1968” at Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, as well as numerous exhibitions dedicate to protagonists of the movement. The catalogue edit by Silvana Editoriale, includes essays written by the curators and other academics, and the reproductions of all the art works exposed.

ITALIA POP – L’arte negli anni del boom

From September 10 to December 11 2016. Fondazione Magnani Rocca, via Fondazione Magnani Rocca 4, Mamiano di Traversetolo (Parma). Getting here 

ORARI

Sunday and National Holidays open. Opening Times: from Tuesday to Friday continuous hours from 10 to 18 – Saturday, Sunday and Holidays continuous hours from 10 to 19. Closed on Mondays, 31 October open. The ticket office is open until 1 hour before museum closing. Admission Prices: € 10,00, for visiting both temporary and permanent collection – € 5,00 school groups. Info and Group visits booking: tel. 0521 848327 / 848148 Fax 0521 848337 info@magnanirocca.it Exhibition and catalogue (Silvana Editoriale) curated by Walter Guadagnini and Stefano Roffi. Essays written by Antonio Carnevale, Mauro Carrera, Walter Guadagnini, Gaspare Luigi Marcone, Stefano Roffi, Alberto Zanchetta.

PARTNER

The exhibition is realized thanks to: FONDAZIONE CARIPARMA, CARIPARMA CRÉDIT AGRICOLE. Media partner: Gazzetta di Parma, Kreativehouse. Sponsor tecnici: Angeli Cornici, AON SpA – Fine Arts, Jewellery & Private Solutions Specialty, Butterfly Transport, Fattorie Canossa, Gufram, Società per la Mobilità e il Trasporto Pubblico