Catalogue

Countless books have been written on Adolf Hitler. When CBS announced its intention of producing a film on his youth years ago, the almost unanimous chorus of protest that ensued can be summarised as saying: “We know who he was and what he did. What else is there to know?” Frederic Spotts offers a completely unprecedented view of Hitler and the Third Reich in a surprising examination of the Führer’s aims and huge machinery he built up around him. The key role of culture in his vision of the Arian super state has seldom been addressed. It was not the end to which power should aspire but a means to obtain it. From the spectacular mass rallies in Nuremberg to the imposing architectural works, from the musical festivals and his tormented relationship with Wagner to the policies of cleansing, from his own watercolours to the dream of opening an enormous art gallery in Linz: the artist manqué thus succeeded in expressing his talent by mesmerizing Germany and most of Europe. The only enemy that Hitler would not have imprisoned once the fighting was over but “left living comfortably in a fortress with permission to write his memoirs and paint” was Winston Churchill, the British officer who painted the ruins of a village during the Great War while Hitler immortalized a church on the other side of the river. Carl Burckhardt, the commissioner of the League of Nations in Danzig who met the Führer twice in 1939, was therefore probably right to suggest that the dictator had a split personality: “the rather gentle artist” on the one hand and “the homicidal maniac” on the other. For obvious reasons, writers have concentrated on the homicidal maniac for over fifty years now. While in no way wishing to ignore the second Hitler, Spotts addresses the first.

We entrust our memories to monuments so that they might preserve them for us. Hence we can afford to forget them. This is the paradox of the memorial: built as an aid to remembrance, it becomes the opposite, a machine of forgetting. Contemporary monumental art has racked its brains to find a remedy for this pathology. The 1960s saw the formation of a heterogeneous, often radical and contradictory movement of artists involved in the design of “counter-monuments” or “anti-monuments”.   Devices that use negative means to make us profoundly question our paradoxical relationship with memory and forgetting.  Andrea Pinotti borrows Gordon Matta-Clark’s term “non-uments”, which he translates as nonumenti, of which he offers both a grammar and typology. But does the “non-ument” really do any better than the monument? Does a parallelepiped or a fountain that disappears into the ground really help our forgetfulness more than a proudly erect, stubbornly vertical obelisk or column? Does a performance or reenactment lasting a few minutes or hours do a better job than a mausoleum firmly planted where it has stood for centuries? Do air, light, colours and bits truly save us from amnesia more than stone, bronze or iron? Today these questions have become more pressing than ever: the memorial is a red hot issue again, just when efforts are being made in several quarters to demolish as many as possible. At a time when statues are being dumped in landfills as a consequence of the wave of iconoclastic violence inspired by cancel or woke culture, this book proposes an aesthetic and political reflection on contemporary monumental art and the contradiction that besets it: denying the monument, in order to reaffirm it, and making the “non-ument”.

Judging by the variety of garments depicted in fine detail in Etruscan art, we are dealing with a people subject to multiple cultural influences, also as regards fashion. So much so that, if an “Etruscan style” existed, it would be impossible to imagine it outside the context of trade relations and frequent exchanges between Mediterranean and Near Eastern peoples. This is the case with the variations on the chiton, a garment of Greek origin, but also with hairstyles like the long plait worn down the back, of Oriental derivation, or the tutulus imported from Greece, but interpreted according to typical local forms. Larissa Bonfante seeks to identify the most indigenous features of Etruscan fashion by conducting a multifaceted analysis of its development from the 8th to the 5th century BCE. She does this with the aid of a rich iconography that follows the evolution of individual garments, footwear, ornaments and hairstyles, about which written sources yield little information. It is through artists that we know about the Etruscans’ fondness for luxury that led them to adorn themselves with jewelry and accessories; their custom of wearing tailor-made clothes as opposed to the loose, flowing garments worn by the Greeks, and their reluctance to embrace the nudity favoured by the latter.  But also their fondness for a wide range of hats in contrast to the Greek custom of going bareheaded, and the female custom of wearing clothing that elsewhere was reserved for men, such as the semicircular tebenna, the short mantle that could even be worn back to front, and footwear with laces. This custom reflected the freedom enjoyed by women in Etruscan public life and society, compared to those in other coeval civilizations. For Bonfante, clothing becomes an important historical document for dating finds and attributing a gender, a social rank, and even a name to the figures depicted. Although Etruscan fashion reflected the assimilation of Greek and Near Eastern models that were then transmitted to the Roman world, this still left room for the development of a specifically Etruscan style.

At Black Mountain College, the experimental school in North Carolina that had welcomed the Albers fleeing Nazism, Anni would tell her students: “We have to go where no one was before us.” A bold attitude that did not stop her from looking back over things to gauge the progress made in the arts and design. Only by knowing exactly where we stand can we dispel the confusion that prevents us from consciously experiencing the creative act and opening up new paths. This collection of writings, with a foreword by Nicholas Fox Weber, gives us access to the enlightened thinking that she developed over 50 years – from her time at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau to the 1980s in the United States – drawing on her experience in the field as well as her theoretical and philosophical readings. Anni Albers returns to various themes she found particularly meaningful: the supremacy of timeless and anonymous design that is functional and not self-referential; the importance of struggling with the material; the idea that limitation from the outside stimulates inventiveness; the value of audacity; and the belief that the act of creation is the strongest emotion there is. Her writings on design and the art of weaving are still studied in universities throughout the world and her teaching continues to be an inexhaustible font of inspiration.

An untiring assistant and patient model, Diego Giacometti shared 40 years of life and work with his brother Alberto, in what was one of the most intense symbiotic relationships in the history of modern art. Diego’s creative career embraced sculpture and design, and his approach to the art of decoration was extremely personal. The furniture and objects he made  possessed a spare, severe, elegance, which was embellished by subtle references to past civilizations, starting with that of the Etruscans, and offset by the bronze he favoured. His instinctive liking for animals led him to portray them often, also in furniture, where they were not simply ornamental elements.  Indeed, they transformed the actual structure of the object, enlivened the internal volumes and made them even lighter and more airy, evoking the essential lines of a landscape. Diego shared these concepts with the famous interior decorator Jean-Michel Frank, with whom he worked on several occasions. As well as receiving many private commissions, Diego was invited to create projects for public institutions, from his work for the Musée National Marc Chagall to the decoration for the new Musée Picasso in Paris at the age of eighty, which definitively, and posthumously, consecrated him as an artist. In this catalogue, published on the occasion of the first Italian exhibition on Diego Giacometti at the Fondazione Luigi Rovati, curator Casimiro Di Crescenzo traces a biographical profile of the artist, sheds light on several aspects of the Giacometti brothers’ life in Paris, clarifies certain facts, and unearths interesting new information, also in Diego’s correspondence with family members. The four texts introducing the sections of works describe the main thematic nuclei of Diego’s production (sculpture, furniture, objects, depictions of animals), as well as his aforementioned role as a model for others, his father, and especially Alberto. The catalogue is enriched with essays by Roger Montandon, Eberhard W. Kornfeld and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Gian Francesco Gamurrini’s Autobiografia – written at the age of 86 – traces key moments in an entire life dedicated to archaeology and to protecting the cultural  heritage of the Arezzo area from plundering by speculators and art dealers, especially after the suppression of ecclesiastical bodies. This was a threat to be avoided at all costs, since the French occupation had resulted in the dispersal of part of the art treasures on the international market. Giamarrini’s work as a librarian was carried out with the same civic passion as his archaeological activities and his defence of cultural heritage as conducive  to the growth of a national consciousness. These pages describing his travels in Italy to document its epigraphic evidence, are on a par with Goethe’s Italian Journey, not so much for the description of landscapes and monuments, as for the wondrous attention  – typical of 18th-19th century peripatetic literature – to the people he encountered, which brings them alive and allows us a glimpse of life at the time. The volume is enriched by the essays of Sara Faralli, Gulio Firpo, Andrea Gaucci, Giulio Paolucci.

Italian edition onlyThe Kaminia stele, held by the National Archeological Museum in Athens, is one of the three most illustrious inscriptions of antiquity that have guided generations of Italians in exploring the history of Ancient Greece. Created in the 6th century BCE as a grave marker and unearthed between 1883 and 1885 on the island of Lemnos, the stele was originally around two metres high, but only the upper half has survived. It bears the profile of a man holding a spear and shield, who had distinguished himself in society for his prowess as a warrior.  Around the figure and on the right-hand side of the stone are incised two hundred letters of the Greek alphabet: 33 words in all, on 11 lines in alternating directions – from top to bottom, then bottom to top, or from right to left and vice versa. However, the language written in Greek is neither Greek nor Indo-European; it belongs to the same family as Etruscan and Raetic – spoken and written in an area bordering on Austria, Switzerland and Germany. Archaeologists, historians and linguists investigating the Kaminia stele and its context find themselves faced with a still unanswered question. Were the inhabitants of Lemnos, documented by the stele and other inscriptions, of the same lineage as the Etruscans who migrated from Anatolia, with one group settling on Lemnos and another arriving in Etruria?  Or are we dealing with Etruscans who arrived on Lemnos from Italy to establish a colony or trading station, and with pirates in the Aegean? It is difficult to know what happened. The community that wrote on stone and terracotta in the Lemnian language is indistinguishable from other social and ethnic groups who lived on the island, with whom it may have shared the same material and figurative culture, technologies, religious and funerary rites, and ways of living. If the Tyrrhenians of Lemnos came from Etruria, the complete absence of objects made in Italy would indicate that they did not maintain much contact with their homeland. Regarding the hypothesis of migrants from Anatolia, we are completely in the dark concerning their provenance, culture and original traditions. “No one saw the truth, there is only opinion.” (Simonides of Ceos). The story of the stele and of the people of whom it was an expression, is told in this book and in the exhibition at Fondazione Luigi Rovati which runs until 18 July 2023. The show is promoted in collaboration with the Italian Archaeological School of Athens, which has been conducting excavations and research on Lemnos for a hundred years. The volume features four texts by Carlo De Domenico, Riccardo Di Cesare, Germano Sarcone and Emanuele Papi,  director of the Italian Archaeological School of Athens,  who also wrote the introduction.

One of the leading artists of the twentieth century, Alberto Giacometti’s works now fetch a premium at international auctions. His oeuvre addresses multiple themes and spans almost all forms of visual art (drawing, painting and sculpture). In this variegated panorama Marco Belpoliti focuses on a common, very powerful theme in the artist’s work: space. From the circumscribed space inside rooms to that surrounding the artist’s sculptures, especially the large scale creations designed for public areas, Belpoliti is our guide to writings and artworks, declarations and interpretations, family relationships and friendships, exploring not only physical space but also the great artist’s emotional space.

After the book Camera straniera, devoted to Giacometti, Marco Belpoliti sets out to explore the life and works of another great artist, Francisco Goya. Analysing a series of drawings, portraits and self portraits, the author retraces Goya’s life and artistic career and unveils clues about his “secret”: the progressive hearing loss that began in the artist’s 30s and ended up completely cutting him off from the outside world around 1792, halfway through his life. This disability greatly influenced his art, and the fantasy elements and chimera that inhabit his works are an eloquent expression of the anguish and despair of his isolation.

With texts by Lucio Rovati, Giovanna Forlanelli, Salvatore Settis, Mario Abis, Mario Cucinella, Giulio Paolucci and Martina Corgnati. The volume describes the genesis and operating principles of both the Fondazione Luigi Rovati, a material and immaterial infrastructure of the knowledge society, and the Museo d’arte in the Foundation’s headquarters at 52 Corso Venezia in Milan, where ancient and modern interact in a historical and artistic continuum, in an antique palazzo remodelled by architect Mario Cucinella.

Ever since the Middle Ages, the Arezzo area has attracted the attention of collectors and scholars of antiquities, due to the thin and lustrous fictile vessels that were frequently unearthed there in considerable quantity. These vessels with a coral-red coating, often decorated in relief with plant motifs and figured scenes, aroused curiosity and admiration, to the extent that Giorgio Vasari praised their “most delicate carvings” and Grand Tour travellers mentioned them frequently in their diaries. In the wake of this interest, in 1841 Marco Antonio Fabroni, an Arezzo scholar of local antiquities and director of the city’s museum, published Storia degli antichi vasi fittili aretini. This was the first monograph on this significant class of pottery tableware, now known in the field of archaeological studies as terra sigillata, of which Arezzo was an important production centre.  Accompanied by nine plates reproducing 189 finely detailed, quality drawings made by the artist and sculptor Ranieri Bartolini, the volume was intended to provide an overview of what was then known about these vessels. The analytical and pragmatic approach is what makes it worth republishing today.

Bilingual edition Ita/EngFrancesco Simeti is the creator of a visual universe that through a mix of naturalistic and surrealistic elements – ranging from the botanical to those inspired by medieval miniatures – analyzes the development of natural history, showing its relationship to human social history. This publication is devoted to Simeti’s site-specific intervention for the Fondazione Luigi Rovati Art Museum and is part of a new series of monographs on important contemporary artists who have collaborated with the Foundation. Composed of two tapestries (Alla corte della civetta and Elleboro) and a series of decorative ceramic elements (Phantázō), Simeti’s work operates on multiple levels between history and fiction, reinventing the antique in personal ways and forms. Inspired by medieval bestiaries, the tapestries feature a tangled mass of hybrid and metamorphic creatures – owls, salamanders, sea monsters, unicorns, felines, rhinoceroses – through which unrecognizable human figures wearing gas masks, helmets, and respirators seek to make their way: the image represents the traumatic relationship between humans and the natural world. In conversation with Luigi Fassi, Simeti describes the elements that triggered the creative process: the boiseries and stuccoes of the palazzo (home to the Art Museum), located in a series of rooms that had remained unoccupied for years; photodocumentation of some dispersed 18th-century tapestries on the theme of chinoiserie; and a collection of precious Etruscan buccheri in black ceramic. A combination of centuries and styles, revisited and renewed, in which ancient, modern and contemporary interact mimetically.