La Vita dell'Arte V

Renewed again this year, here within the art rooms of Villa Venino in the city of Novate Milanese, is the exhibition entitled La Vita dell’Arte (The Life of Art) now in its fifth edition, which brings together Italian, Greek, Russian and Chinese artists. This is a precious journey for us: an exhibition that aims to present through works of yesterday and today, the signs of art through a polyphonic dialogue. During the previous exhibition editions within the historical rooms of Villa Venino, we wanted to present works from a time even not close by, exhibiting among the different testimonies, drawings and paintings starting from the 17th century. This precise stance, attentive to the enhancement of particularly expressive ancient works has always wanted to unite, as in a choral "song," the voices of yesterday with those of today: drawings, paintings, sculptures, engravings, photographs, videos and installations are renewed every year through the presence of ever new artists.

La Vita dell’Arte has always aimed to present visitors with works capable of reflecting on the theme of figure, interior and space. This year, the journey within the forms of art has greatly privileged the theme of the figure declined in very different ways in relation to time: from the 19th century to the present day, significant testimonies that tell intense stories are collected here.

It is difficult to remain indifferent to the oldest work in the exhibition, created in the late 1800s by Carlo Stragliati: the figure of a model observes us with depth and questioning. This is the tale of existence where the forms of the body are the symbol of the subject's presence. Similar but exaggerated expressive and existential condition we can instead find in the contemporary oil-on-canvas painting by Stefano Cipollari, an overwhelming metaphor of our time. The young tattooed figure sitting on a sofa, wears a disturbing mask and observes us: ambiguity and contamination are the marks imprinted on his skin.

By contrast, Maurizio Pometti's canvas appears suspended in its figural narrative where the body of painting and colors appear in a poetic synthesis that is word and silence, united in a secret dialogue.

The work of Raffaele Capuana (creator of endless drawings dedicated to the theme of the self-portrait), of Duilio Bartolini (lyrical creator and master of the sign in the obsessive tale of incommunicability), of Anna Santinello (powerful sculptor who knots in iron threads the plots of life) by Anna Madia (refined and expressive painter), Angelos Mavraidis (superb self-portrait in pencil featured here) and Demetrios Asterion, despite their diversity tell the theme of the face and figure through the expressiveness of the sign charged with tension and lyricism.

On the other hand, the surreal declination of the characters present in the works created by Fabrizio Riccardi (the figure of his warrior with a broken sword, holding a dove, is striking), by Enrico Baj (lyrical and ironic) and Mirko Gualerzi (a great Italian master almost forgotten, creator of drawings, paintings and sculptures of profound denunciation), are contrasted with the evocative 1993 canvas by Antonio Bucaro, so dense with Pop Art references.

Stefano Spera, on the other hand, narrates the life of art within the space of a museum full of different presences while Francesco Damiani and Li Yaoze create a three-dimensional space that stimulates our thinking. In the landscape, however, Luca Conca's figuration contrasts with She Wenwen's informal narrative.

As we know by now, La Vita dell'Arte has always wanted to present also video works that in the testimony related to new technologies, finds in the works of Zhang Wenzheng, Lu Weixin, Chen Jing, Alexandr Sokolov and Kaisar Salykov, expressive reflections between history and contemporaneity.