Search results for ""Silvana""

Painting, ceramics, sculpture, textile works, immersive installations, performances: the third exhibition at MOCO Hôtel des collections is an ode to the Amazon Basin seen through the art and the ecological, economic and political stakes that characterise it. This exhibition catalogue showcases more than a hundred works coming from Catherine Petitgas's collection, based in London. Artists: Sol Calero, Anna Bella Geiger, Teresa Margolles, Beatriz Milhazes, Ernesto Neto, Hélio Oiticica, Ivan Serpa, Luiz Zerbini. Text in English and French.

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The Bonnard Museum has the privilege of unveiling, in the summer of 2019, a selection of remarkable works from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, preserved by an exceptional private collection. Privilege in more than one way since such an ensemble also highlights the fruitful relations between museums and private collectors. Text in English and French.

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This volume offers the first overview of American photorealist and Pop painter Howard Kanovitz (1929-2009), dubbed by Barbara Rose the grandfather of photorealism. Howard Kanovitz's landmark 1966 Jewish Museum solo exhibition is widely deemed to have launched the genre of photorealism.

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Offers an exhaustive account of this unique human, artistic and intellectual adventure through a comprehensive and up-to-date art historical analysis of Leonardo's work. Accompanied by spectacular illustrations. In the Quattrocento, an era when the representation of the human figure was dominated by timeless images based on Botticelli's example, Leonardo worked with light and colour to achieve a modelling that would restore three-dimensionality to the face and soften the rigours of perspective in a misty landscape, no longer a mere backdrop but a vivid pictorial transposition of careful scientific studies and refined psychological analyses. In Leonardo's pictures, it is the changing atmospheric conditions that complement and breathe life into the delicate rendering of the forms and the emotional experiences of the subjects. Thus the artist created powerfully expressive religious pictures and secular portraits that have a modern and disquieting quality in which the faces are true 'windows of the soul', highlighting a silent psychological dialogue between the painting's subject and the observer. Artistic innovations are sustained by a new sensitivity, as well as by study of the refraction of colour, to which much space is dedicated in the Florentine master's theoretical writings. The present book offers an exhaustive account of this unique human, artistic, and intellectual adventure through a comprehensive and up-to-date art historical analysis of Leonardo's work accompanied by spectacular illustrations.

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De Chirico was one of the most important figures in Italy's modern art world, who with Carlo Carrà founded the metaphysics movement. This exhibition this book accompanied - organised in collaboration with the Embassy of Italy, in celebration of the '2013 Year of Italian Culture in the United States' - was dedicated to the genius of De Chirico. De Chirico was one of the most important figures in Italy's modern art world, who with Carlo Carrà founded the metaphysics movement: a way to express and set down a world that goes well beyond visible material reality, where past and present criss-cross and intertwine, where hopes and dreams coexist. The marvellous sculptures and drawings on display at the Phillips Collection, demonstrate how De Chirico (1888-1978) uses figures from mythology, archaeological artifacts, and historical events to create images that suggest an alternate, mysterious reality. They will absorb the visitor in a learning expedition through a contemporary metaphysical alphabet, one that is deeply innovative precisely because it is able to reinterpret the past.

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Lee Mingwei's artistic practice is primarily concerned with rituals of giving and receiving. His solo exhibition presented at Gropius Bau in Berlin, showcases his installations and performances from the last three decades: central to the exhibition is an exploration of art's potential to be a transformative gift. In Lee Mingwei's works immaterial gifts such as song, conversation or contemplation are given and received. For many of his projects the starting point is his personal encounters, which are then transformed into installations. Seeing such experiences as moments in which time is gifted, Lee's projects reveal a fascination for the role of the host. Accordingly, in autumn 2019, the artist put out open calls looking for Berlin-based hosts to participate in several of his projects. In The Living Room hosts are invited to exhibit their unique collections and in The Mending Project the menders host conversations with visitors whilst repairing their damaged items of clothing. These processes create a common space where viewers are given the opportunity to enter into and exchange, and where rituals of care and healing begin to unfold.

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The exhibition Expressionism in Art and Film aims to shed new light on Expressionism across traditional genre boundaries and to show the mutual influences between the arts of painting, graphics and film. In painted and moving images, the exhibition shows how deeply Expressionism was permeated by the crises of its time and how it loudly gave expression to the rapid social upheavals. Expressionism as a cultural revolutionary movement endeavored from the beginning to unite art and life, to abolish the separation of the arts and thus multiple talents became the ideal of the artists and the total work of art the desired goal. Text in English and German.

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Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz''s (b. 1973, USA) first major European survey presents a sequence of installations drawing on architecture, cultural artefacts and cuisine to tell stories of social ritual, conflict and loss. It encompasses work considering the citizen visionaries of post Soviet Hungary, Middle Eastern Beatles fans and the stonecarvers of Afghanistan, with Rakowitz''s casts of players and objects revealing the legacy of colonisation, modernism and globalism. The artist''s life-size replica of the gigantic lamassu, one of two monumental winged bulls that once guarded the gates of Nineveh in Iraq, currently features on Trafalgar Square''s Fourth Plinth. This recreation of an ancient mythological creature is made from everyday date syrup cans and is part of an epic endeavour to recreate all 7,000 objects looted from the Iraq Museum in 2003, as well as those destroyed more recently at archaeological sites like Nimrud, also presented

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Michele Zaza (Molfetta, 1948) has never defined himself as a photographer - even though he mainly uses the photographic tool - but more as 'a thinker of images'. In a period, the seventies, characterised by an analytical attitude towards the structure of the artistic language, Zaza pursued one of the most interesting researches with his peculiar use of photography. Although his culture is strongly anchored to the Mediterranean world - his origins are from the south of Italy - the artist adopts an operative strategy in which every emotional or rhetorical overload is cancelled. In the name of a rigorous research whose basic foundation is the knowledge of philosophical discourse, the imaginary sequences of Zaza are constructed using recurrent symbols: the body - his own and his parents' - the earth, the stones, the stairs, the lightbulbs, clocks and bread. These are essential elements that convey the artist's meditative need to investigate the profound meaning of life, whose only possibility of being unveiled is the recourse to primary forces, especially that of the human figure deprived of any cultural overload.

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Marianna Simnett's WINNER is a multichannel film installation, conceived as a three-act dance for film told through the lens of football. It is commissioned on the occasion of the 2024 European Football Championship, hosted by Germany. WINNER echoes the dramaturgy of the game and dissects its socially constructed power hierarchies, crowd psychology, and constant pressure to perform. Through the element of dance, the work restages and radically transforms football's most impassioned moments: elation and triumph, brutality and ferocity, suffering and defeat. Simnett's vivid hallucinatory world extends beyond the screen into the exhibition space, subverting the architecture of football and transporting it into the museum.This is the sixth in a series of publications accompanying solo exhibitions of contemporary artists at Hamburger Bahnhof Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart. It comprises a curatorial essay by Charlotte Knaup, an extensive interview with the artist

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The volume offers an unprecedented reflection on the work of Lucio Fontana, whose art appears to be not so much masculine, volcanic, demiurgic, as much critical literature has already claimed, but alluding to the female generative force, which is active in the mind of the artist as in nature, in the cosmos and in the fertile body of the earth. Through a selection of refined drawings and small sculptures, a new reading of the master's research is proposed, directed towards a chthonic, original, telluric dimension of a newly generated material: new light can thus be shed on the cuts, on the holes and on the graphic representations, often performed with a primary, childish gesture, like an instinctual drive, even before being a project and reproduction. The volume includes a series of critical texts and is completed by bio-bibliographical apparatuses.Texts by: Sergio Risaliti, Paolo Campiglio, Andrea Bruciati, Luca Piero Nicoletti, Maria Grazia Messina, Lauretta Colonnelli, Leti

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The volume traces over 50 years of activity in the field of industrial design by Antonio Citterio, one of the masters of contemporary design. Introduced by Andrea Branzi and Francesco Bonami, the volume - structured in seven chapters - offers an accurate and extensive account of a work that has seen the production of over 600 products, united by a stylistic code capable of combining a discreet and elegant modernity with a meticulous attention to detail: from the Diesis series and the Baia sofa, designed with Paolo Nava and which mark the beginning of a ten-year collaboration with B&B Italia, to the important collaborations with Flexform, Arclinea, Vitra, Flos, Axor, up to the most recent works with Cassina and Illy. The rich iconographic repertoire includes product images, archival photographs - some of which tell the “behind the scenes” of the birth of some design icons - and autographed sketches. Texts by Stefano Casciani, Francesca Picchi, Deyan Sudjic (former director of the Design Museum of London).

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Jan Fabre’s latest series of works includes brilliant coral sculptures, as if ready to be offered to a temple, and blood drawings. The practice of comprehension of the mystery makes him dialogue with the artists and alchemists of the Renaissance, who tried to explain both the enigma of human formation and the origin of art on the basis of laboratory research, as well as with those religious writers who tried to understand the essence of the sacrament of marriage, one of the five (or seven) great sacraments, through the detailed study of sanctified texts. - Dimitri Ozerkov In Fabre’s artistic universe, beauty is a daimon that takes on a thousand forms, some even uncomfortable, disturbing, and acts as a bait to communicate a profound sense of life. The tension in his works and the astonishment they arouse are always infused with a spirituality that harmonises contrasts. The narrated caritas by Fabre is the universal act of love, which survives over the centuries and is all that matters. - Melania Rossi Texts by: Dimitri Ozerkov, Melania Rossi, Sara Liuzzi, Barbara De Coninck

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Hermann Nitsch, one of the most paradigmatic artists of the legendary Wiener Aktionismus, author of performances and installations, paintings and drawings, through his artistic expressions creates a genuine 'total theatre' that unites myth and aesthetics, religious metaphors and everyday life, classicism and archaism, and even a barbaric element, all this in a monumental form that has no equals. In his project for the total work of art, the Orgien Mysterien Theater, Nitsch reveals the ethical and aesthetic reserves of meaning inherent in Wiener Aktionismus, a special form of performance art derived from the re-interpretation of myths and collective ritual praxis and forged by the artist-philosopher, which is manifested in the activity of the masses, who take part in the performance. “My actions drill into vivid being, wanting there to be being where there is nothing. I seek the vivid existence that lies deep in tragedy, where destruction and creation pervade each other. I seek intensity, I seek life.” — Hermann Nitsch

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The volume documents Bellum, the new artistic project by Carlo Valsecchi (Brescia, 1965). The 44 large-scale photographs in this series tell the story of the ancestral conflict between man and nature and man and man; nature used as a defence from others, and nature as something to defend ourselves from. The Alps are a symbol of all this, as nature at its most extreme, yet also the site of the last war of position. The project therefore explores the territories and fortifications of northeast Italy connected to World War I, one of the last times when human fate and experience were directly linked to the laws, conditions and control of nature. In three years of work, Valsecchi roamed these mountains with his view camera from winter until spring, and captured its harsh reality, in a form that is often abstract, intimately aesthetic, and absolute. The images in Bellum are sudden glimpses, portals of light and composition that hover in an endless time between loneliness, isolation and waiting. The catalogue features essays by Florian Ebner, chief curator of the Cabinet of Photography at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Yehuda Emmanuel Safran, art and architecture critic and professor at the Pratt Institute in New York. Text in English, German and Italian.

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The volume, dedicated to Marine Hugonnier (Paris, 1969), filmmaker and contemporary artist, presents a selection of works representative of her artistic approach since her beginnings in 1998. At the border between documentary and fiction, the work of Marine Hugonnier constitutes an exploration of the politics of the gaze. His works are an attempt to deconstruct the inherent complicity between the gaze and political ideologies. His work thus aims to question the cultural and political framework that conforms each point of view. His films, which can be described as experimental films or film essays, are sometimes associated with visual anthropology, his field of investigation being the space that separates the subject from his observer. She travelled a lot with her Aaton s16 mm camera on her shoulder, adopting the posture of the reporter and the ethnographer more than that of the artist, mixing images and genres. For Marine Hugonnier, producing images involves thinking about them. Cinema is conceived by the artist as a political act. A filmmaker above all, the artist also practices photography and creates works on paper. Her artistic research transversally addresses feminism, gender fluidity, anti-colonialism and issues related to the convergence between human and non-human. She tries to reconfigure the devices of capture and restitution of the cinema to build a new regime of images. Texts by: Michael Newman, Nicole Brenez, Carles Guerra; conversation between Eyal Weizmann and Marine Hugonnier.

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Artur Zmijewski is one of the most important radical figures in the Polish art scene. His work reflects a concern for the socio-political problems of our times by examining the mechanisms of power and oppression within the existing social order - as well as conflicts of various types that border on violence - while highlighting the relationship between extreme emotions and their physical expressions, while also analysing the impact of memory and collective trauma.The fear of the title, a homage to the 1974 homonym Fassbinder's movie, deserves a special mention because of its centrality in human life and its frequent use as a method of social control.This monograph presents a wide selection of historical, recent and unpublished works by the artist, and includes texts by Diego Sileo, Juli Carson, Galit Eilat, Adam Mazur and Adam Szymczyk.Text in English and Italian.

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The publication The Architecture of Deception / Confinement / Transformation accompanies the eponymously titled exhibition trilogy at BNKR - current reflections on art and architecture in Munich and showcases 18 diverse artistic standpoints at the intersection of art and architecture. Each chapter directly corresponds to the evolving history of the exhibition space, which was originally constructed as a camouflaged air-raid bunker during the Second World War, then used as a postwar internment camp, and finally transformed into its current state as a mixed-use residential and office building. The Architecture of Deception explores notions of illusion and deception, the creation of new realities, truth versus fiction; Confinement explores notions of shelters and safety, captivity and freedom, ‘outside’ versus ‘inside’; Transformation explores notions of gentrification, decay and definition of living spaces. With contributions by the editors, David Adjaye and Nikolaus Hirsch, Isabelle Doucet, and Madeleine Freund. Artists: The Architecture of Deception: Hans Op de Beeck, Emmanuelle Lainé, Bettina Pousttchi, Gregor Sailer, Cortis & Sonderegger, The Swan Collective; The Architecture of Confinement: Ramzi Ben Sliman, Mona Hatoum, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Annika Kahrs, Özgür Kar, Joanna Piotrovska; The Architecture of Transformation: Dana Awartani, Olivier Goethals, Eva Nielsen, Jeremy Shaw, Hannah Weinberger, Andrea Zittel.

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Through some 50 works, this book seeks to establish a dialogue between the different ways of approaching the exercise of self-portrait: firstly between artists, but also between the works of the same painter, like Bonnard, whose dark and sometimes disturbing side of his self-portraits takes the opposite view from the usually peaceful and serene oeuvre of the French master. Text in English and French.

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Colour is at the core of our perception, the very essence of how we see and understand the world, but the question to ask is: how does one interpret it? Six well-known British artists – David Batchelor, Ian Davenport, Lothar Götz, Jim Lambie, Annie Morris, Fiona Rae – have interpreted in different ways, the relationship of colour within space. Colour is the main protagonist of their works: it can be found in Batchelor’s sculptures assembled with found objects, in the coloured trails of Davenport’s paintings, in Fiona Rae’s delicate, floating marks on white surfaces, and in Annie Morris’ sculptures that powerfully define the environment. Finally, the colour comes out of the paintings to invade the walls and the floor of the Gallery itself, with two site-specific creations: an entire wall painted by Lothar Götz, and Zobop, the floor made of vinyl by Jim Lambie. Text in English and Italian.

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This book presents the surprising collection of Venetian glass donated by spouses Carla Nasci and Ferruccio Franzoia to the Carlo Rizzarda Modern Art Gallery in Feltre. A collection of over 800 pieces ranging from the 18th century to today, allowing the viewer to marvel, in particular, at the Murano production and its great glassmakers. A first nucleus includes the elegant Liberty and Déco glasses produced by Vetri Soffiati Muranesi Cappellin Venini & C. in the twenties: the artistic director of the company was Vittorio Zecchin, one of the most fascinating personalities working in Venice between the First World War and the decade later, who with his elegant, transparent blown glass inspired by the Renaissance, marked a decisive turning point in contemporary Murano production. A second group is represented by the artifacts produced between 1925 and 1960 referable to the figure of Carlo Scarpa, creator of highly successful, innovative glass shapes and fabrics, who collaborated respectively with the Cappellini company since 1926 and with Venini since 1932, together with a mix of products from other companies and authors active in the lagoon. The third type of documented artifacts is that of table glasses: consumer objects destined for ephemeral use and therefore an important testimony of taste and customs.

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This monograph, edited by Ilaria Bernardi, presents the first systematic and complete examination of the career of the Italian artist Marinella Senatore, from her debut in the early 2000s until the present day. This publication coincides with the 10th anniversary of SOND – The School of Narrative Dance, the nomadic school founded by the artist in 2012 and for which she is most renowned around the world. Trained in music, fine arts and film, her practice is characterised by public participation, initiating a dialogue between history, culture and social structures. Rethinking the role of the artist as author and the public as recipient, Senatore’s work merges forms of protest, learning theatre, oral histories, vernacular forms, protest dance and music, public ceremonies, civil rituals and mass events, reflecting on the political nature of collective formations and their impact on the social history of places and communities. This publication reconstructs the span of Senatore’s personal and creative life through an interweaving of biographical information and relevant historical research, and a lavish selection of the artist’s works, thereby making it a new and unique contribution to the literature on the artist. Text in English and Italian.

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Seeds of Knowledge highlights the collection of 15th to 17th-century European printed herbals of Dr. Peter Goop (Liechtenstein). Herbals were highly illustrated, critical texts to doctors and lay healthcare providers that included both the folkloric and medicinal uses of plants. The text and illustrations were repeatedly refined as the medicinal benefits of a plant’s use were more clearly understood and the style of illustration tended towards higher degrees of naturalism. These books were working manuals and frequently annotated by readers with notes of herbal recipes/medicines or other uses not found in the printed text. Dr. Goop’s collection is one of the most extensive in private hands. Using the Morgan’s 10th-century manuscript of Dioscurides’ De materia medica (MS M.652) as a centerpiece, this Thaw Gallery exhibition will explore developments in the understanding of the healthful and healing properties of plants, as Europe moved away from medicinal folklore towards an increased understanding of the natural world.

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An architect without being one, an anomalous designer, a gifted draftsman and collector of objects, Luca Meda (1936-1998) wrote one of the most important chapters in the history of 20th-century Italian design. The world of domestic interiors was his privileged field of action, and the very close, one-of-a-kind relationship with Molteni&C has provided, since the seventies, an example of perfect symbiosis between creativity and business, art and industry. Among the pieces of furniture that have become iconic are the Piroscafo bookcase designed together with Aldo Rossi, the Zim and Ho chairs, the Vivette armchair, the Primafila sofa and the modular systems 505 and Pass. This publication offers an exhaustive portrait of Luca Meda, at long last highlighting the importance and extent of his production - which includes furniture, installations, architectural projects and design objects of all sorts - in the context of a still pioneering season of Italian design, but to whom we nevertheless owe the subsequent success on the world stage. The historical-critical essays dedicated to his work are accompanied by a series of interviews with collaborators and friends who shared knowledge and practice in the realisation of his projects, as well as the re-edition of an interview with Meda himself, published on “Gap casa” in 1983. Bio-bibliographical appendix and a list of works complete the fascinating journey of the volume. Critical essays: Serena Maffioletti, Alberto Ferlenga, Sofia Meda, Nicola Braghieri, Beatrice Lampariello, Rosa Chiesa, Giampiero Bosoni e Chiara Lecce, Dario Scodeller, Mario Piazza. Interviews: Luca Meda, Romano Barchi, Mario Carrieri, Nicola Gallizia, Eliana Gerotto, Peter Hefti, Felix Humm, Laura Maifreni, Bruno Longoni, Carlo Molteni, Diego Peverelli, Richard Sapper, Filippo Zagni. Text in English and Italian.

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A leading figure in contemporary art since the early 1970s, Chuck Close is internationally renowned for his monumentally scaled portrait paintings, based on photographs. Close likes to push the boundaries of different techniques, processes and materials, working with various collaborators to achieve his vision. His first public artwork, Subway Portraits, featured a series of 12 mosaic and tile artworks, was commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts & Design program in 2017. This book presents Chuck Close's new series of mosaic artworks as well as related works, such as prints, tapestries and photographs. It also documents the production process of these works by fabricators Mosaika Art and Design and Magnolia Editions, as well as the 12 works they produced for the 86th St. Subway Station at Second Avenue in New York City. Text in English and Italian.

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This book presents the Gianfranco Luzzetti collection housed in the historic complex of the former convent of the Clarisse in Grosseto, a new museum in the city. The collection is the result of the donation to the Municipality, in 2018, of over 60 works from the personal heritage of Luzzetti, an antiquarian from Grosseto, deeply linked to his land. The paintings, of great quality, trace Italian art from the 14th to the 19th century, with particular attention to Florentine art of the 17th century. The collection includes masterpieces by Antonio Rossellino, Giambologna, Rutilio Manetti, Passignano, Niccolò di Pietro Lamberti, Corrado Giaquinto, Camillo Rusconi, Pier Dandini and Giovanni di Tano Fei, as well as important works by Donatello and Beccafumi and works already donated to the Municipality of Grosseto in past years, of Santi di Tito and Cigoli. This volume, with introductory texts regarding the history of the site, the birth of the Museum and the Collection, is complemented by an anthology of writings by Luzzetti and bibliographic apparatuses. Research and texts: Sandro Bellesi, Marco Ciampolini, Roberto Contini, Elena Dubaldo, Lucia Ferri, Claudia Ganci, Cecilia Luzzetti, Gianfranco Luzzetti, Andrea Marchi, Mauro Papa, Marcella Parisi, Francesca Perillo, Gianluca Sposato, Angelo Tartuferi. Italian edition, with English translation in the appendix.

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The Chinese artist Deng Guo Yuan has spent his entire life dealing with the theme of the garden. He interprets this theme against the background of the knowledge of the Chinese tradition. In the Chinese philosophy of Daoism it is regarded as a 'way', 'method' or 'principle'. It is the highest reality and the highest mystery, the primordial unity, the cosmic law and the absolute. Text in English and German.

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Iran - known as Persia until 1935. The country is among the most loaded with history in the entire Asian continent. The cradle of ancient civilisations, it was the scene of events and changes that irreversibly modified the history of humanity. This beautiful volume of photographs by Maria Luisa Gaetani, who, on the occasion of her most recent trip to Iran, has been able to capture, with a rare sensitivity, the shapes and colours of the country. Not only cities and buildings, but also human faces and glimpses of everyday life. Text in English and Italian.

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Passage is a site-specific, two-channel video installation, which expands Nujoom Alghanem's experimentation with contemporary Arabic poetry through the language of film. Taking her quintessential 2009 poem, The Passerby Collects the Moonlight, as a point of departure, this installation explores the universal experience of displacement. This Brechtian conflation of reality and fiction, culminating in a scene that depicts Falak arriving at the pavilion in Venice, prompts the viewers to consider the parallelism between the film's three protagonists: the director, the actress and the fictional character. These three women of a similar age share the experience of similar dualities: the hidden and the revealed, fragility and power, belonging and displacement. The experience of passage and duality also permeates the design of the exhibition space, where visitors can enter and exit from either side of the pavilion. A large screen, diagonally positioned at the centre, divides the space into two symmetrical halves. The viewers are invited to engage both with Nujoom and Amal's real process of creating the film and with the cinematographic portrayal of the fictional character of Falak. Text in Arabic.

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Dedicated to American artist Sandy Skogland, this book accompanies her first anthological exhibition at CAMERA in Turin, Italy. It retraces the entire path of the artist interweaving her biography with her professional progress, documented with the reproduction of her entire oeuvre. From the first photographic series produced in the mid-seventies to the great compositions of the early eighties, up until the brand new Winter, which the artist has been working on for over ten years: visionary and surreal works, which arise from the meticulous construction of a set that the artist then photographs, in a process that explains the rarefied production of the artist and the peculiarity of her visual path, merging installation, sculpture and photography.

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Drawing inspiration from the everyday female consciousness and an oppressive, censorial dictatorship - as experienced in 1970s and 1980s Brazil - Italian-born Anna Maria Maiolino, who moved to Brazil in her late teens, has produced works steeped in vital force, embracing a wide range of languages and media throughout her artistic career: from performance to sculpture, from videos to photography, from installation to drawing. Her works study human relationships and the difficulty underlying communication and expression, travelling the faint boundary between an attention to human physicality and corporeity and a more intimate, spiritual sphere. Text in English and Italian.

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In 1972, Giulio Paolini held an exhibition in New York. Art historian, curator, and critic Germano Celant, who coined the term 'Arte Povera' in 1967, was asked to edit the exhibition catalogue. What followed was an ample monograph that covered the course of Paolini's career - his concepts, themes, contexts and influences. This was an unprecedented move, as, until that time, most galleries produced simple brochures. This monograph was one of the first in-depth and scholarly studies of a contemporary artist, and as such, paved the way for future monographs. Text in English and Italian.

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The Museo del Gioiello in Vicenza - the only example in Italy entirely dedicated to jewellery - is renewed every two years: without permanent collections, it offers biennial exhibitions of unique and exclusive jewels in the evocative spaces of the Basilica Palladiana. For the third biennium since its inauguration (on display until 2020), the museum hosts 310 pieces of inestimable value, exhibited in nine thematic sections curated by as many internationally renowned experts. In presenting the masterpieces of this exhibition, this catalogue gathers the contributions of the curators which, far from the usual museum criteria of chronological or stylistic classification, restore the complexity of the jewel through multiple points of view, where the ancient dialogues with the contemporary and the masterpieces of the past are juxtaposed with those made with the technologies of the future. Text in English and Italian.

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This volume, edited by Antonio Aimi and Antonio Guarnotta, offers a new, up-to-date study of the most important cultures of Mesoamerica and of the Peruvian Area, through magnificent artefacts held by the MIC (Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza) and various other Italian museums. The cultures of the Aztecs, Mayas, Incas and other populations of ancient America are analysed in light of the most recent archaeological and ethnohistorical research. Themes of prime importance are examined in depth: the conquest of America as seen from the point of view of the conquered, the status of women, the systems of calculation of ancient Peru, and pre-Columbian art presented as art, not only as archaeology. Text in English and Italian.

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Cai Guo-Qiang, a Chinese artist known throughout the world for his exciting performances with fire, presents in this volume the works created in Naples as part of the project 'In the Volcano'. With these works, resulting from his 'explosion workshop', the artist created a short circuit between our present and the memories of ancient Rome. Cai Guo-Qiang, as a modern Prometheus, plays with his mastery in dominating the fire, and drawing on the powerful and suggestive traditions of the oriental world he crafts pyrotechnic works and performances with which he invites us to rediscover the inescapable bonds between the classical past and the modern sensibility, and in particular between the explosion that in 79 A.D. destroyed Pompei - paradoxically preserving it for us - and artistic creation.

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Published to accompany the first time the Luigi and Peppino Agrati Collection will be revealed to the public; the collection can be viewed between May and August 2018. During the Festival of Nouveau Realisme (New Realism) in Milan in November 1970, Christo removed the white cloth in which he had wrapped the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II in the Piazza del Duomo and placed it over the Monument to Leonardo da Vinci in the Piazza della Scala. This is viewed today as a key event in the contemporary art scene in Milan, a moment that Luigi and Peppino Agrati experienced live. They immediately contacted the artist and commissioned him to create works for the garden of their villa. Wealthy entrepreneurs, the Agrati brothers shared subtle and sensitive insights into art that fostered a deep understanding of the images that shaped their era. This show is the first time their collection is being revealed to the public, through a representative selection of Italian and American works of art donated with generosity and foresight by Luigi Agrati to the Intesa Sanpaolo. From a nucleus of sculptures by Melotti to masterpieces by Fontana, Burri, and Klein, the exhibition provides an in-depth examination of Italian 'Nuova Figurazione' painting ('New Figurative Painting'), working its way to the roots of the new 'Arte Povera' ('Poor Art'). The discovery of American art coincides with the Agratis' acquisition of works by the principal exponents of Pop Art - including the iconic Andy Warhol and his monumental Triple Elvis - and by the Minimalists, of which Dan Flavin's large neon work dedicated to Peppino Agrati is emblematic. In a kind of multiple constellation side by side with examples of Italian art, the collection reveals extraordinary works by Robert Rauschenberg (acquired in large numbers from the end of the 1960s to the 1980s), Cy Twombly (the original mediator between American and Italian art), and conceptual artists like Bruce Nauman and Joseph Kosuth, whose experiments with language are displayed in a dialogue with those by Alighiero Boetti and Vincenzo Agnetti.

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Italian designer Francesca Liberatore (1983) has worked for some of the biggest fashion houses in the world. Francesca Liberatore worked for Viktor & Rolf in Amsterdam, Jean-Paul Gaultier in Paris and Brioni Womenswear in Italy, before launching her own brand around 2009. This book, presenting designs and stylistic inspirations of great intercultural richness, is structured in a four-section journey (London, Paris, Milan, New York) that represent the significant phases of the young fashion designer's professional growth. Gathering its experience in these pages, it allows to spread with renewed vigor the Italian style that the new generations - whom Francesca Liberatore represents - interpret all over the world. Text in English, Italian, French and Chinese.

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The book is dedicated to the extraordinary cardboard by Pablo Picasso depicting his masterpiece - Guernica - the tapestry of which was displayed at the entrance to the UN Security Council room. The cartoon, created eighteen years after the oil painting, arises from an exceptional collaboration - as well as friendship - between Pablo Picasso, Nelson Rockefeller, one of the greatest patrons of the twentieth century, and the artist Jacqueline de la Baume Durrbach, who recreated the painting of Guernica through the ancient art of the tapestry. The book tells the story of cardboard, while offering a critical reading of the painting, which has become a universal symbol of values linked to democracy, freedom and peace. Text in English and Italian.

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Alain Godon has been given carte blanche at the Musée Départemental Matisse to focus on the journey made by Matisse in 1930 from New York to Tahiti, drawing the reader into his colourful and joyful universe. A contemporary artist of international renown, Alain Godon (Bourges, 1964) has been given carte blanche at the Musée Départemental Matisse to focus on the journey made by Matisse in 1930 from New York to Tahiti. This re-appropriation of Matisse's journey, including his discovery of New York and its architecture, as well as Polynesia, is paralleled by a questioning of the notion of the term 'journey' itself and its different meanings. With paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs and installations made especially for the exhibition, Alain Godon offers us works which, although they can be immediately understood, are in fact far more complex, unveiling a unique universe that for those who take the time to look deeper is home to tales of everyday life. Using the same singular imagination he shares with Matisse, Godon reveals his desire to bring joy and happiness into his work. Text in English and French.

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ROMA55 is Maurizio Galimberti's personal tribute to the Eternal City. Following monographs on New York, Berlin, Venice, Beijing and Paris, the 'Instant Artist' redesigns routes and reinvents new perspectives of the districts, monumental architecture, squares and those scenes that have become part of the city's legend. Text in English and Italian.

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Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition, the book presents the evolution of the pictorial work of Anna Conway (Durango, Colorado, 1973) from her debut up to the last works of 2016. It is the first monograph dedicated to the American painter. Conway's approach to representation - at the same time precise, methodical, analytical and intuitive - involves the depiction of scenes that blend close observation and pure imagination together, along with an almost narrative attention to the place, the moment and the characters. The book features images of the paintings specifically created for the exhibition together with an extensive iconographic summary of her earlier works, as well as a critical contribution by Mario Diacono and an interview with the artist by American critic Bob Nickas, who has been following Conway's research for a long time. Text in English and Italian.

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Who other than Henri Matisse's daughter Marguerite could describe his engraving in this way? Responsible for validating her father's press-proofs, she is, along with her son Claude Duthuit, the author of this catalogue raisonné of his engravings. She has devoted a large part of her life to allowing this 'unknown continent' to be discovered and which is nevertheless essential in understanding the progression of an artist known above all for his mastery of colour. The Matisse Departmental Museum, with the help of the Matisse family, Barbara Duthuit, and some most prestigious institutions, explores in this catalogue all of the engraving techniques used by Matisse from 1900 up to the end of his life. For him, engraving, drawing, painting, and sculpture all had the same importance, and in this work all the key themes that led him to build his research around the human figure, are represented. For the very first time the matrices (woodcut, lithograph, drypoint, etching, linocut...) accompany the works and help us to understand that high standards and hard work, along with an economy of means, led Matisse to transform black into a colour that he used to serve the purity of line. Text in English and French.

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Ruth Orkin (1921-1985) was only 17 when she got on her bicycle and began a “bike trip” across the United States in 1939, from Los Angeles to New York. Her crossing and her audacity, quite unusual for the time, aroused the curiosity of people and the local press, which devoted numerous reports to her. On her return, she wrote a manuscript on her adventure which remained published for some time. Her experience was a decisive influence in her life and career. Twelve years later, Ruth became a professional photographer, and produced her most famous image American Girl in Italy (1951) which again returns to the experience of a woman who travels alone. Consisting of photographs, scrapbook pages, excerpts from her diary of the trip, maps and various documents, this book - which accompanies an exhibition at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson - returns to this extraordinary adventure of one of the greatest women photographers of the 20th century.

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This fully illustrated monograph is dedicated to architect Pierre-Louis Faloci, 2018 Laureate of the Grand Prix national de l’architecture and author of the concept of “global village”. The book highlights the career path of Faloci and explores the concept of “ecology of the gaze”, which for him, together with that of “eco building”, plays a key role in today’s architecture. Text in English and French.

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Joe Colombo (Milan, 1930-1971) was one of the greatest designers of the last century, visionary and ingenious, capable of giving shape to ideas that retain a striking relevance to this day. Trained first at the Brera Academy and then at the Polytechnic of Milan, Joe Colombo has expressed, in just 20 years of work, an absolutely innovative world view, placing man and his life at the centre of reflection, imagined a dynamic and transformable habitat both on a domestic and urban scale. A design in the round, aimed at satisfying every need – also thanks to technology and new materials – and to shape the space and its objects according to the different activities of the moment, be they working or social interactions. From here, the modular and dynamic furnishing accessories with futuristic lines, among which some pieces that have become iconic of Italian design stand out such as the Tube Chair, the Spider lamp (Compasso d’Oro 1967) or the Boby trolley (now at the MoMA in New York), the “monoblocks”, such as the Mini-Kitchen or the Total Table with integrated dishes, up to the global housing unit, a visionary “machine”, which encompasses all the needs of living. This volume constitutes the first catalogue raisonné of his work, of which about 180 projects are documented, divided between works still in production and historical works; introduced by the essays by Ignazia Favata - his historical collaborator - and Domitilla Dardi, it is completed by a critical anthology. Text in English and Italian.

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Miquel Barceló is one of the most interesting artists active today. For over 40 years, his poetics has embodied different languages such as painting, sculpture, graphics and publishing, in a great and very original artistic pathway. The International museum of Ceramics in Faenza (MIC) devoted an outstanding solo exhibition to the Spanish artist. Curated by Irene Biolchini and Cécile Pocheau Lesteven, it was the first anthological event devoted to Barceló's ceramic production, from his debut to the present day. The event included a special project created by the artist just for the MIC Faenza in a dialogue with works in the collection, covering the history of ceramics. This selection of key ceramic pieces from the MIC collection, dating back to 3000 BC, alongside the works of Barceló are all presented here through illustrations and accompanying text. Text in English and Italian.

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