compiled by Laura GIACALONE
“What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting.” André Berne-Joffroy
by Sybille EBERT-SCHIFFERER
What makes Caravaggio so attractive for thousands of admirers today is his combination of emotionally appealing paintings and his violent and – for some – sexually deviant, perhaps even repellent personality. He does not to match our concept of “normal”, i.e. moral coherence of personality, public behavior and work.
by Genny DI BERT
From 1600 until the present, Caravaggio’s work has influenced many trends in art, including that of Cezanne. Caravaggio’s breakthrough was his sharp realism: Saints shown as average people and religious experiences as ordinary human drama – expressed through emotions, theatre and allegory. He depicted idealized concepts as manifested in the visible world. Though an extraordinary colorist, he was selective in his compositions – each detail of his paintings corresponds to reality and the models he used.
by Genny DI BERT
Realism in Socialist Czechoslovakia was shown at the Gallery Mánes, the museumm of modern art in Prague in December 2009. The exhibition comprised over 70 works revisting the period of Czech realism through a selection of paintings, sculpture, graphics and photography, many previously unpublished or unseen. The curator of architecture of the Prague Foundation Eluetheria, Francesco Augusto Razetto, along with the show’s other curators, including his brother Ottaviano Maria Razetto, are working on bringing the exhibition to Italy and New York.
by Laura GIACALONE
With its colourful carnival of clothes and bed sheets hanging from the windows, its maze of narrow streets and secret corners, its roaring chaos of motorbikes and shouting vendors, its inebriating mixture of coffee aromas and pizza flavours, Naples is by its nature a Baroque city.
By Adriana Sanchez
Actor John Turturro recently returned to his Italian origins while playing the innkeeper in Italian Folktales, a show dedicated to one of Italy’s most ancient traditions: storytelling.