Favoloso Calvino
Scuderie del Quirinale
Roma | ItalyMost of what Calvino has to say has to do with the gaze, with the visual dimension, meaning: with ideas of space. Real spaces, environments and places from his lived experience; imaginary spaces, the result of transfigurations and flights of fancy; concrete objects, either described with painstaking accuracy or subjected to ingenious symbolic interpretations; and, again, the space par excellence, the cosmos, and virtual spaces evoked or invented by works of art.
Through the support and collaboration of national and international, public and private institutions, as well as numerous artists and collectors, the exhibition offers visitors a fascinating journey through Calvino’s imagery by investigating his relationship with the visual arts, giving rise to a genuine perceptual adventure.
What emerges is above all the variety and richness of the ways in which the Ligurian writer has depicted man’s relationship with reality through a seamless succession of unexpected perspectives, shifting focuses, and stimulating questions. One hundred years after his birth, Calvino confirms himself as one of the most valuable of our contemporary classics: an author capable of offering new generations of readers suggestions and tools to orient themselves in their own time.
Facing the present indeed requires us to learn to view the reality surrounding us with different eyes and, at the same time, to make visible what the mind and imagination conceive.
In Calvino’s vision, rationality and imagination nourish each other, while planning and inventiveness alternate and intertwine, resulting in a work that is diverse and multifaceted, rigorous and unpredictable. In a word: fabulous.
Most of what Calvino has to say has to do with the gaze, with the visual dimension, meaning: with ideas of space. Real spaces, environments and places from his lived experience; imaginary spaces, the result of transfigurations and flights of fancy; concrete objects, either described with painstaking accuracy or subjected to ingenious symbolic interpretations; and, again, the space par excellence, the cosmos, and virtual spaces evoked or invented by works of art.
Through the support and collaboration of national and international, public and private institutions, as well as numerous artists and collectors, the exhibition offers visitors a fascinating journey through Calvino’s imagery by investigating his relationship with the visual arts, giving rise to a genuine perceptual adventure.
What emerges is above all the variety and richness of the ways in which the Ligurian writer has depicted man’s relationship with reality through a seamless succession of unexpected perspectives, shifting focuses, and stimulating questions. One hundred years after his birth, Calvino confirms himself as one of the most valuable of our contemporary classics: an author capable of offering new generations of readers suggestions and tools to orient themselves in their own time.
Facing the present indeed requires us to learn to view the reality surrounding us with different eyes and, at the same time, to make visible what the mind and imagination conceive.
In Calvino’s vision, rationality and imagination nourish each other, while planning and inventiveness alternate and intertwine, resulting in a work that is diverse and multifaceted, rigorous and unpredictable. In a word: fabulous.
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