EXHIBIT "RETROSPETTIVA DI MARIO GIACOMELLI"
7/7/2023 - 14/1/2024 10:00 a.m.
Lonato Castle
Lonato Castle
In the Fortress of Lonato del Garda (Bs)
Retrospective of Mario Giacomelli
one of the greatest interpreters of 20th-century Italian photography
An important retrospective dedicated to the extraordinary photographic legacy of Mario Giacomelli (Senigallia 1925 - 2000), one of the greatest interpreters of twentieth-century Italian photography, is being organised from 7th July to 29th October 2023 by the Municipal Administration of the City of Lonato del Garda in collaboration with the Ugo Da Como Foundation. It will be hosted in the evocative setting of the Sala del Capitano in the Rocca Visconteo Veneta of Lonato del Garda, inside the monumental complex of the Fondazione Ugo Da Como.
Very few people are aware of the great treasure hidden in the rooms of the Public Library of Lonato del Garda: these are 101 photographs by Giacomelli, belonging to the heritage of the municipality. In 1985, Mario Giacomelli donated all the photographs he had selected for that exhibition to the community at the end of an exhibition held in the Town Hall of Lonato del Garda.
After the last exhibition of the Photographic Collection in 2004, the Administration set up a working group led by the Ugo Da Como Foundation to organise this exhibition, entitled Mario Giacomelli, a retrospective. The Lonato del Garda Collection. Of considerable cultural value, it is curated by Filippo Maggia and also benefits from the collaboration of the Mario Giacomelli Archive.
The exhibition presents 81 of the 101 photographs owned by the Municipality of Lonato del Garda representing several of the famous series that have made Mario Giacomelli's production famous, such as the series of seminarists, landscapes immortalised from high altitudes, and Scanno.
Filippo Maggia writes in the catalogue:
"From this collection some works serve as accomplished examples of the unique style that still distinguishes Giacomelli's photography today: the plastic cut and pictorial composition of the image 'The Model' of 1955; the dazzling, almost fluorescent black and white emanating from the famous photograph of the Scanno boy, the result of a long and reasoned wait; the young seminarists shot from above who seem to be suspended in the void, on a floor of which Giacomelli has erased almost all traces by sculpting the blackness of the subjects against the white background; the face of an elderly woman who emerges at the base of an image where dark figures dance, made with two negatives, a photograph invented to represent "the face of death the slightly out-of-focus child who looks at the camera while keeping the little girl behind him in focus, thus forcing the viewer to switch from one perspective plane to another; a celestial female face, with hinted shadows of seagulls accompanying it in a poetic, dreamlike flight, from the series on "Caroline Branson from Spoon River"; the contrasting, severe images of the series "Presa di coscienza sulla natura" (Conscience About Nature) from 1976-1984, rigorous metaphors of the pure and primitive relationship that Giacomelli advocates between man and nature.
A precious collection that of the Municipality of Lonato del Garda, a gift of inestimable value left by a unique and, still today, unrepeatable photographer".
The director of the Mario Giacomelli Archive, Katiuscia Biondi, writes in the catalogue:
"Giacomelli is great for having created a new and extraordinary photographic language, made of a highly contrasted black and white, surprisingly strong for an era in which photography was expressed in polite shades of grey. A language so unprecedented that it raised technical and existential questions, and was - at first - considered to be 'riddled with errors'. But those errors soon appeared to the critics as disturbing revelations of 'pieces of the real' - a real as never before, despite the Neorealism of those years'.
The exhibition, conceived as a stop in Lonato del Garda in the year in which Bergamo and Brescia are the Italian Capital of Culture, aims to make this enchanting locality, one of the most fascinating of the Lake Garda hinterland, and the monumental complex of the Ugo Da Como Foundation, with its Rocca (National Monument), the exceptional House Museum (with over 20 fully furnished rooms) and the Historical Library, one of the most important private libraries in Italy, known to a wide audience of tourists and art and history enthusiasts.
The exhibition was realised thanks to a contribution from Fondazione Cariplo.
The catalogue published by SKIRA is edited by Filippo Maggia.
Opening Hours
Opening: Thursday, 6 July 2023
Exhibition dates: 7 July to 29 October 2023
Open to the public: Monday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Cost of admission to the Rocca
- free for residents in the municipality of Lonato del Garda
- 5 euros for the exhibition only and free visit of the Rocca
- 10 euros to visit the entire monumental complex of the Ugo Da Como Foundation (Rocca and Ugo Da Como House Museum)
For information and bookings
Via Rocca, 2 - Lonato del Garda (Brescia)
Tel. 0309130060 - email prenotazioni@fondazioneugodacomo.it - www.fondazioneugodacomo.it
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