Ruggero Savinio: Reflections on his Father
April 25, 2018
Join us for a special evening with Ruggero Savinio, son of the artist, in conversation with CIMA Fellow Giulia Tulino, sharing memories of his father and his uncle Giorgio de Chirico (subject of CIMA’s 2016-17 exhibition season), insights into his father’s practice, and how his father’s work shaped him as an artist.
Please note this conversation will be presented in Italian, with Sara Fruner serving as translator.
MISSED THE PROGRAM?
WATCH THE VIDEO HERE!
Program schedule:
6pm – registration and viewing of Alberto Savinio
6:20pm – conversation program, followed by Q&A
7:30pm – program concludes, viewing of exhibition
8pm – doors close
Ruggero Savinio (b. 1934) is a painter and writer and the head of the Archivio Savinio. After graduating in literature from La Sapienza in Rome, he lived for many years in Paris, returning to settle in Rome in the mid-1980s. His work has been shown in numerous galleries at home and abroad, and in 2012 he was given a solo exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome.
Giulia Tulino received her Ph.D. in contemporary art history from La Sapienza, University of Rome, in 2017 for her dissertation, La galleria dell’Obelisco e il surrealismo a Roma 1940-1960, and has published two additional essays about the gallery. Since 2015, Tulino has been curator of the Jacorossi Collection, Rome, which holds over three thousand art works of Italian contemporary art. She is also currently curator at MUSIA, Rome.
Sara Fruner is a writer, editor, and literary translator living and working in New York. A contributor to La Voce di New York, she is also a published poet, founder of a blog on cinema, and a freelance commissioning editor and literary translator for Giunti Editore and other publishing houses in Italy.
SLOW ART DAY
April 14, 2018
Saturday, April 14 is SLOW ART DAY! We are thrilled to participate for the fourth year in a row in this wonderful international initiative—”a global event with a simple mission: to help more people discover for themselves the joy of looking at and loving art.” Read more about Slow Art Day’s launch in this article from ARTNews.
“Slow art”—the idea that looking closely, over a period of time, leads to new discoveries and a more profound connection to art and to the creative process—lies at the heart of CIMA’s ethos and mission, and we practice this act of active looking throughout our season. During our regular open hours (1pm – 6pm) on Saturday, April 14, we invite you to pick one or two paintings by Alberto Savinio and challenge yourself to spend 10 minutes in front of the work. Share your insights and discoveries with us, with your friends, and with others who are here visiting.
At 11am and 2pm, we’ll be serving espresso and enjoying a guided visit of the exhibition, which will include a “slow art” looking session and conversation focused on two works chosen by our fellow in residence, Elena Salza.
Live! From the Autobiographical to the Philosophical: Alberto Savinio’s “Vita dell’uomo”
April 09, 2018
A U.S. Premiere with Luciano Chessa and Luca Valentino
PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT TAKES PLACE AT THE ITALIAN INSTITUTE OF CULTURE, 686 PARK AVENUE. RSVP IS REQUIRED.
In 1951, five years after Alberto Savinio completed Vita dell’uomo, the work premiered at Milan’s La Scala Theater in a production designed by the author himself. Although intended as a key to unlocking the artist’s personal history, the ballet ironically illustrates the life cycle of an “everyman”—from birth to education, love to disillusion, and, lastly, dream to death. Throughout, the protagonist encounters characters from the artist’s earlier paintings and plays, including animal-headed businessmen and the parents in the form of “Armchair-Mama” and “Armchair-Poppa,” as seen in CIMA’s current exhibition. What might it have meant for Savinio to bring these significant figures to life on the stage?
This evening will feature the U.S. premiere of the ballet’s main scenes, performed on piano by Luciano Chessa. A slide show with a selection of Savinio’s costume designs and stage sets will provide visual context, while insightful commentary on the overall production will be provided by Savinio theater expert Luca Valentino. Expanding the discussion beyond the work itself, Valentino and Chessa will situate Vita dell’uomo in an international context, offering the audience an in-depth vision of Savinio’s idiosyncratic post-WWII poetics of music and theatre.
Note: This program takes place at the Italian Institute of Culture. It is the second of two evenings organized, in collaboration with the Italian Institute of Culture, by the Center for Italian Modern Art on the occasion of its Alberto Savinio exhibition. Click here for more information on the first half of the program, presented at CIMA on Friday, April 6.
Luciano Chessa is a composer, conductor, performance artist, pianist, and music historian specializing in 20th-century Italian and 21st-century American repertoire. His compositions include the experimental opera Cena oltranzista nel castelletto al lago—a work of over 55 hours of fasting that was entirely livestreamed—and A Heavenly Act, an opera commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with original video by Kalup Linzy. In New York alone, Chessa has been commissioned multiple times by the Performa Biennial, and in 2014 he presented three concerts at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as part of the exhibition Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe. Chessa is the author of Luigi Russolo Futurist. Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult (2012), the first monograph dedicated to Russolo and his “Art of Noise.” In 2009, his Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners (OFNI) was hailed by the New York Times as one of the best events in the arts; it continues to tour internationally. He is currently preparing the edition of Julius Eastman’s Second Symphony, and will conduct its world premiere in September 2018.
Missed the event? Watch the video here!
Live! Exploring Alberto Savinio’s Theater
April 06, 2018
Exploring Alberto Savinio’s Theater Work with Luca Valentino
Alberto Savinio experimented with every theatrical genre available to him throughout his career, working as a composer, costume and set designer, playwright, librettist, stage director, and theatre critic. In discussing a selection of this eclectic twentieth-century master’s theater productions, operas, and radio dramas, Luca Valentino will shed light upon the creative process behind this highly-original artist’s combinations of sound, image, and word. Featuring excerpts from original radio performances, this presentation will begin with Savinio’s involvement with the Parisian avant-garde milieu before WWI, touch on his critical-yet-cautious public production during the Fascist Ventennio, and culminate in his post-WWII resurgence, manifested by his works for the Italian National Radio and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival, as well as Milan’s Piccolo Teatro and Teatro alla Scala.
Note: This is the first of two evenings organized, in collaboration with the Italian Institute of Culture, by the Center for Italian Modern Art on the occasion of its Alberto Savinio exhibition. It will take place at CIMA, at 421 Broome Street in SoHo. Click here for more information on the second half of the program, to be presented at the Italian Institute of Culture at 670 Park Avenue on Monday, April 9.
Luca Valentino is Professor of Performing Arts at the Conservatory of Music of Alessandria, Italy, where he is also Artistic Director of Scatola Sonora, an international festival of small-scale opera and musical theater named after a collection of Alberto Savinio’s writings. Over the course of his three decades directing for the stage, Valentino has established himself as an international expert on Savinio—writing numerous essays on the artist and adapting his works for performance on stages around the world. Amongst other accolades, his book on Savinio’s theater, L’arte impura (1991), received the Premio Silvio D’Amico from Italy’s National Drama Institute.
Missed the event? Watch the video here!
NY-AREA ART HISTORY FELLOWS NETWORK GATHERING
April 03, 2018
Are you an art history fellow in the New York area? Register here for our meet up in and tour of CIMA’s Alberto Savinio exhibition on Tuesday, April 3. Come meet your colleagues from organizations like the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library, the Museum of Modern Art, Columbia University.
Join the NYC Art History Fellows Network LinkedIn group!
DIOSCURI: Ryan and Trevor Oakes in conversation with Brett Littman
March 29, 2018
ARTIST TALK
DIOSCURI: Ryan and Trevor Oakes in conversation with Brett Littman
When they were young, brothers Giorgio de Chirico and Alberto Savinio, while not actually twins, thought of themselves as two halves of one mind and called themselves the Dioscuri—the Greek name for Castor and Pollux, the twin brothers of Greek and Roman mythology.
Trevor and Ryan Oakes are identical twin brothers and artists who have developed a collaborative practice. They too feel like two halves of one mind. Being mirror-image twins (one is right-handed, the other left-handed), their strengths tend to be complementary, similar to the way the right brain and left brain contribute differing approaches to cognition.
The Oakes’ creative collaboration centers on an investigation into human perception of light and space. In the process they’ve created an entirely new method for depicting the act of seeing that uses the binocular collaboration of the two eyes in an innovative way. Their spherically concave drawings and paintings echo the curvature of the eye. Lawrence Weschler in The New York Times called their art “one of the most intriguing breakthroughs in the depiction of physical reality since the Renaissance.”
Join us for an evening with the Oakes Twins, in conversation with Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center, to reflect on modes of seeing, brotherly collaboration, and the art of Alberto Savinio.
Program schedule:
6pm – registration and viewing of Alberto Savinio
6:20pm – conversation program, followed by Q&A
7:30pm – program concludes, viewing of exhibition
8pm – doors close
Drawing Night at CIMA
March 20, 2018
Join us for a special Drawing Night and Aperitivo, led by artist Beatrice Scaccia. CIMA’s opens its unique setting to artists of all levels to analyze and draw from works on view by Alberto Savinio. These paintings, conceived over just a few years in the late 1920s and early 1930s, nevertheless traverse a wide range of techniques.
Pencils have been generously donated by Blick Art Materials and paper has been provided by the legendary Italian
All skill levels welcome!
Limited to 30 participants.
General Admission: $15
FREE for CIMA Members.
About the artist: Beatrice Scaccia is a visual artist and writer living and working in New York City. Originally from Italy, Scaccia studied Fine Art at the Fine Art Academy in Rome and Writing at the Minimum Fax Editor (Rome) and the Holden School (Turin). In 2006 she co-founded the non-profit art spaceINART with renowned artist Gino Marotta, where she was the Director and educator for five years. Located in Piazza de Spagna, INART’s programs included both instruction and exhibition of the intersectionality between visual, performing and written arts. Scaccia’s practice has long been an amalgamation of the written word and visual language. Her work has been featured on Artnet News, Flash Art, The Art Newspaper, Domus, Marie Claire, Arte Mondadori, Drome Magazine, InsideArt, Art Fuse, Sole24Ore, Exibart, Atribune.
*Please note that guests are allowed to bring their own supplies but only sketching materials are permitted. No water media, ink, or solvents are allowed in the galleries.
Refreshments have been generously donated by:
Tell Me Something Good: Joanna Pousette-Dart, Sarah Sze, and Lisa Yuskavage
March 08, 2018
Tell Me Something Good: A book launch and conversation with Joanna Pousette-Dart, Sarah Sze, and Lisa Yuskavage, moderated by Jarrett Earnest and Lucas Zwirner
Since the inception of the Brooklyn Rail of twenty years ago, co-founder and artistic director Phong Bui and the Rail’s contributors have published over four hundred interviews with artists. This panel—a conversation between writer Jarrett Earnest, editor Lucas Zwirner, and artists Joanna Pousette-Dart, Sarah Sze, and Lisa Yuskavage, focused on their respective practices—illustrates the insight that can be gained from these intimate dialogues. All three artists are included in Tell Me Something Good, which contains sixty Rail interviews in total. While each chapter offers a specific perspective on the life and work of an artist, collectively they tell the story of a journal that has grown during one of the more diverse and surprising periods in visual art. There is no unified style or perspective; the Brooklyn Rail’s strength lies in its ability to include and champion difference. Selected and coedited by Jarrett Earnest, a frequent Rail contributor, with Lucas Zwirner, the book includes an introduction to the project by Phong Bui, as well as many of the hand-drawn portraits he has made of the artists he has interviewed over the years. This combination of verbal and visual profiles offers a rare and personal insight into contemporary visual culture.
SOLD OUT!
Become a CIMA member to be the first to learn about upcoming programs!
Please note: Zwirner will be live-streaming the program on their Facebook page.
Program schedule:
6pm: Doors open; Alberto Savinio exhibition viewing
6:20pm: Program starts, followed by Q&A with audience
7:30pm: Program concludes; book signing and Alberto Savinio exhibition viewing
8pm: Evening concludes
Speaker biographies: (more…)
CIMA TURNS FOUR!
February 21, 2018
To celebrate our birthday, join us for special by-donation open hours of our acclaimed Alberto Savinio exhibition.
On February 21, 2014, we launched CIMA into the world with a series of presentations devoted to the art and legacy of Fortunato Depero. That inaugural Study Day served as inspiration for a large Depero exhibition organized in Madrid the following year. With many of the CIMA papers published in the accompanying catalogue, the Depero project achieved for the first time CIMA’s goal of serving as an incubator of ideas for other arts institutions.
We’ve since organized in-depth programs on Fabio Mauri, Medardo Rosso, Alfred and Margaret Scolari Barr, Postwar Italian Art, Giorgio Morandi, Giorgio de Chirico and Giulio Paolini, and Postmodernism in Italian Art. Our 10th Study Day, dedicated to Léonce Rosenberg, takes place Saturday, February 3, from 2pm to 6pm.
To date, CIMA has hosted 24 remarkable fellows, two of whom will be presenting at this first of two Study Day programs held to coincide with the Alberto Savinio exhibition season. We are proud to have supported the research of these young scholars, many of whom have gone on to hold teaching positions at esteemed universities such as Cooper Union, to be curators at major museums such as the Boschi di Stefano in Milan, and to assume research fellowships at prestigious institutions such as the Biblioteca Hertziana in Rome.
Help us celebrate their accomplishments and ensure years to come of great programming and scholarship by making a donation!
BOOK YOUR ANNIVERSARY VISIT NOW!
Drawing Night at CIMA
February 13, 2018
Join us for a special Drawing Night and Aperitivo, led by artist Jen Mazza. CIMA’s opens its unique setting to artists of all levels to analyze and draw from works on view by Alberto Savinio. These paintings, conceived over just a few years in the late 1920s and early 1930s, nevertheless traverse a wide range of techniques.
Pencils have been generously donated by Blick Art Materials and paper has been provided by the legendary Italian
All skill levels welcome!
Limited to 30 participants.
FREE for CIMA Members.
About the artist:
Jen Mazza was born in 1972 in Washington D.C. Mazza received her B.A. in Visual Art and Spanish Literature from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia (1994), and an M.F.A. in Visual Art from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University (2001).
Significant awards include residencies at Yaddo (2005), the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2004, 2005, 2006), Blue Mountain Center (2006), and the Jentel Foundation (2004, 2008). Mazza was also granted a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship to attend the Millay Colony in 2004 and returned again to the Colony in 2013.
In 2001 and again in 2008, the artist received Individual Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts, and in 2008 she was selected to be Artist in Residence at the Newark Museum. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.
Since 2001, Mazza’s paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally including a one-person show at the Jersey City Museum. She is represented by Tibor de Nagy Gallery and currently teaches at the New School of Design and the Pratt Institute.
*Please note that guests are allowed to bring their own supplies but only sketching materials are permitted. No water media, ink, or solvents are allowed in the galleries.
Refreshments have been generously donated by:
