Bruno Corà

Catalogue of the exhibition dedicated by La Galleria Nazionale di Roma to Vasco Bendini on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, which opened in March 2022. The volume accompanies the discovery of the career of one of the major artists of the second half of the Italian 20th century, from his early training with Giorgio Morandi, up to the great Roman solo exhibitions and the Biennales of his maturity. The work of Vasco Bendini, dear to critics such as Francesco Arcangeli and Maurizio Calvesi, opens in the immediate postwar period, following an informal language in search of the volto as a universal archetype, to then focus on gesture and matter, under the influence of, among others, Jean Fautrier. The 1960s are characterised by the inclusion in the paintings of heterogeneous objects and materials, in an approach to Arte Povera and then, with actions and installations, to the Neodada way of doing things. The central objective for Bendini remains in fact the involvement of the viewer, in a fruitful dialogue necessary for the development of his poetics. A large selection of archival photos, along with essays and alleri productions of the works, is flanked by a critical anthology and unpublished writings by the Master. Text in English and Italian.

Tornabuoni Art Paris opens 2023 with an exhibition dedicated to the relationship between art and poetry, examining the case of Giuseppe Ungaretti, on the 110th anniversary of his arrival in Paris, a defining moment in his literary career. The catalogue, with texts by Alexandra Zingone, literary critic and curator of the exhibition, tackles the analysis of the art of the 'short century' with a global view, taking into consideration the constant dialogue between the various exponents of the cultural world. Through passages from critical texts by Ungaretti as an interpreter of art, the volume follows the exhibition among the many works by contemporary artists, including Giacomo Balla, Alberto Burri, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Piero Dorazio and others. Throughout his multidisciplinary career, Ungaretti found himself indiscriminately analysing various genres, including Futurism, Metaphysical, Informalism, Socialist Realism and Expressionism of the Roman School. The exhibition develops around the poet's pieces, in some cases in the form of original manuscripts and first editions. Accompanying the volume is an extremely rich iconographic and archival apparatus accompanies the reader in discovering a virtuous example of the links that have always existed between literature and the visual arts.

“The high dignity of the fire arts derives from the fact that their works bear the most profoundly human mark, the mark of primitive love. (...) The forms created by fire are modelled, more than any other, as Paul Valéry rightly suggests ‘by dint of caresses’.” - Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, 1937 On Fire is the title of an exhibition curated by Bruno Corà, organised by the Giorgio Cini Foundation in collaboration with Tornabuoni Art, from April to July 2022, dedicated to the most evocative of nature's primary elements: fire. From Burri's combustions to Klein's, Arman's and Kounellis's use of gas flame, as well as Calzolari's and Parmiggiani's use of flames and smoke in different ways, the artists have explored both the destructive and generative effects of fire, using different materials, as well as ash and light, creating an innovative form of expression. The exhibition includes works on international loan from the most prestigious public and private collections in Europe and North America, offering thus the opportunity to see some masterpieces that have never or rarely been seen before.

Working together for Agnetti, after all, had been the incipit, as he would tell Tommaso Trini a few years later: ‘a first step’, an initial phase of his work that he called ‘Spontaneous intervention with friends’. By the end of the 1950s, Agnetti had become very close to Manzoni and Castellani, an elective affinity that would endure over the years beyond individual biographical events, and which was built on shared interests and dreams. At the time, Manzoni and Castellani were artists, while he worked in the field of electronic automation. Apart from writing about Azimuth, which testifies to his involvement in the group, in those years he wrote exclusively about and for Manzoni, with whom he was united by a special affinity on certain themes dear to them, which formed the humus of endless late-night discussions, at home around the steaming risotto he had prepared, or around Brera. Agnetti thought then that one could make art without making art, however by saying or writing. He would later state that writing and saying were, like the paintbrush, new tools indispensable to the artist.

This volume presents the artistic career of Klaus Münch through a selection of his work, ahead of an exhibition opening in Spoleto, Italy in October 2023. Born in Freiburg, Germany, after attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, where he graduated in sculpture, he studied in Munich, specialising in painting. Since then, he has chosen to live and work in Italy, where he pursues his personal artistic investigation of the world. His work moves in the fertile furrow between sculpture and painting. Starting from the examples of Mario and Marisa Merz, Gilberto Zorio, Giovanni Anselmo and comparing himself with artists of the same age such as Vittorio Messina and Eduard Winklhofer, Münch analyses the complex relationship between creation and space, between colour and shape. Includes essays by Marco Tonelli, Ivo Iori and the curator Bruno Corà himself. Text in English and Italian.

Five decades of Buren, with responses from his collaborators French conceptual artist Daniel Buren (born 1938) is famous for his “works in situ,” often transforming buildings through colorful glass and stripes placed on columns or walls. This career-spanning monograph includes contributions by curators, gallerists and fellow artists such as Sophie Calle, Hans Haacke and more.

The book documents the formal research of Italo-Persian artist Bizhan Bassiri, who in 1986 wrote the Manifesto of Magmatic Thought. Here he refers to the work of art as the effect of an intuition that arrives within from without but after acquiring substance and form is manifested externally again, in the hope that, ideally, it will last forever. The word 'Noor' clearly refers to the natural light which will put the sculpture Specchio Solare in touch with the space surrounding it, freeing it from its basic function as a reflecting surface to turn it into a place where light becomes shape. Text in English, Italian and Persian.