March 9, 2019
MAON, Museum of 19th and 20th Century Art in Rende (CS)
March 9 – April 13, 2019
ISOLE
Art zones off the coast of Calabria
curated by Tonino Sicoli
Inauguration: March 9, 6:00 pm
Saturday, March 9, 2019 at 6:00 pm, the exhibition “ISOLE. Art Zones off the coast of Calabria”, curated by Tonino Sicoli, which will remain open to the public until April 13, 2019.
The exhibition presents sixty-five artists, not only from Calabria but also linked to Calabria for their activity and exhibitions, who have made an important contribution to the history of art of the last century and the twenty-first.
Reconstructing the history of a territory and identifying its cultural heritage is the first step towards acquiring one's own identity. For a long time, Calabria has not only been penalized by intellectual emigration and the absence of significant phenomena on site, but historiography has also ignored what has happened, in difficult and marginalized situations.
At the end of the 70s, the first signs of cultural redemption flourish in Calabria, young artists begin to question what is happening in the world of art, undertaking journeys and living experiences in other realities.
In the early 80s, Calabrian artists demonstrate that they are no longer tied to cultural models of the past, but are in line with the most current artistic declinations. The so-called post-southernism is born...
Filiberto Menna, Enrico Crispolti and Tonino Sicoli organize an exhibition in Rome at the Luigi Di Sarro Center with emerging Calabrian artists. For the post-southerners this experience represents the end of every inferiority complex and a new identity path begins.
A system of art is gradually formed in which training, communication, structures, information, a cultural policy increasingly integrated with external models create the conditions for a qualified and widespread activity.
In 1997 the Center for Art and Culture "A. Capizzano" was founded on the initiative of Sandro Principe, former member of parliament and mayor of Rende. After seven years of intense exhibition activity, the MAON, or Museum of 19th and 20th Century Art (2004), was established, born from a project by the art critic Tonino Sicoli. The museum is located in Palazzo Vitari (18th century), in the historic center of the Calabrian town, granted on loan for use by the municipal administration. It is the only museum that has a collection of artists born and linked to Calabria in the last two centuries. Contacts and comparisons with the national and international art scene have been created around it, with events and artists who are protagonists of the history of modern and contemporary art.
On the occasion of the exhibition, the catalog-album “Isole d’istanti. The roots of the MAON”, with texts by Nicola Siciliani de Cumis, former professor of General Pedagogy at the University La Sapienza in Rome, and by Tonino Sicoli, artistic director of the MAON, with photographs of forty years of activity.
«A twenty-year period therefore, from 1997 to 2017, of commendable existence in life of the Museum, in the hundred and more full moons spent in the belly of the “Capizzano”. All the other birthdays in the flesh and bones of the prestigious sequence of catalogues mostly edited by Tonino Sicoli, with the tireless initiatives of the MAON, starting from the Around Rotella of 2006, to arrive at the Theatre of Photography of 2017, and beyond.
And then, zigzagging along the entire eternalizable goodness of the Museum, as well as in the context of "Traces of the Twentieth Century", in the other four imposing sections of the MAON: "Art in Calabria", "The Achille Capizzano collection", "The collection Luigi Ladaga”, “The Carmine Domenico Rizzo Foundation Collection”. Aside, the possible other artistic-educational activities of the Museum. In addition to the relative bibliography. This is why it is advisable to historicize critically, contextualize by decontextualizing and decontextualize by contextualizing. And go to the roots of the MAON.» (Nicola Siciliani de Cumis)
«Twenty years of the Capizzano/MAON Center have, for better or worse, been accomplished between strategies and actions, in a crescendo of events, which have intertwined the personal stories of many traveling companions, with the history of the territory. A territory with previous delays and hardships, which have, however, contextualized, giving and receiving contributions, in a progressive proactive action and cultural policy.
Many people, intellectuals, friends, artists, scholars and students, "actors" or users, passing through or permanent, have accompanied the story of an experiment that started from afar, among uncertainties and difficulties but with a shared and, at times, divided enthusiasm, which has written an open book, with chapters already written and others to be written. Forerunners of a design, which has affected the events of a radical cultural project and gradually rooted in a difficult terrain, in a map of different islands, some contiguous and others distant.» (Tonino Sicoli)
Artists on display
Pippo Altomare, Enzo Benedetto, Cesare Berlingeri, Alberto Burri, Achille Capizzano, Luciano Caruso, Nicola Carrino, Alik Cavaliere, Angelo Colagrossi, Domenico Cordì, Francesco Correggia, Rino Cosentino, Maria Credidio, Mario Del Vecchio, Sebastiano Dammone Sessa, Camilla De Martino Thompson, Luigi Di Sarro, Salvatore Dominelli, Epeo, Francesca Ferraiuolo, Franco Flaccavento, Francomà, Alejandro Garcia, Tonina Garofalo, Francesco Guerrieri, Marcello Guido, Bruce Hasson, Jannis Kounellis, Bruno La Vergata, Elda Longo, Domenico Lo Russo, Francesco Lupinacci, Luigi Magli, Mauro Magni, Luigi Malice, Antonio Marasco, Max Marra, Michele Marzo, Giuseppe Negro, Fabio Nicotera, Silvano Onda, Rocco Pangaro, Vincenzo Paonessa, Mario Parentela, Antonio Passa, Salvatore Pepe, Guido Peruz, Tarcisio Pingitore, Antonio Pujia Veneziano, Antonella Rocca, Anna Romanello, Mimmo Rotella, Angelo Savelli, Jano Sicura, Nunzio Solendo, Anna Spagna, Nicola Spezzano, Ernesto Spina, Raffaello Talò, Giulio Telarico, Alberto Timossi, Franco Toscano, Ernesto Treccani, Aldo Turchiaro, Fiorenzo Zaffina.
The event is part of the Annual Exhibitions of the Capizzano Center - MAON and among the PEC 2014-2020 projects of the Calabria Region. It is organized by the "A. Capizzano" Center of Rende, with the patronage of the Municipality of Rende, in agreement, among others, with Matera European Capital of Culture 2019.
