The de Chirico Brothers
May 16, 2017
Join us for an in-depth look at the de Chirico brothers, Giorgio de Chirico and his younger brother, Alberto Savinio—one the subject of this season’s exhibition at CIMA and the other the subject of CIMA’s next exhibition season (2017-18), opening in October 2017. Former CIMA 2015-16 Fellow Nicol Mocchi joins us to discuss her new book, La cultura dei fratelli de Chirico agli albori dell’arte metafisica. Milano e Firenze 1909-1911 (Milan, Archivio dell’Arte Metafisica, 2017) (The Culture of the de Chirico Brothers at the Dawn of Metaphysical Painting). She will be in conversation with current CIMA Fellow Sophia Maxine Farmer.
Mocchi’s book guides us through the cultural explorations undertaken by the de Chirico brothers during the most important phase of their artistic collaboration, the period around the creation of Metaphysical Painting. Based on a systematic study of the books borrowed or consulted by the de Chirico brothers in the libraries of Milan and Florence between 1909 and 1911, this book allows us to deepen our understanding not only of the artistic production of these two artists, but also of their musical and literary activities.
Nicol Maria Mocchi is an Italian art historian specialized in 19th- and 20th-century art, dealing specifically with the relationships and exchanges between different visual cultures. Since 2010, she has collaborated with the Archivio dell’Arte Metafisica and with Milan’s Superintendency for Archeology, Fine Arts and Landscape. In 2016, she was a Fellow at the Center for Italian Modern Art working on the reception, visual success, and critical fortunes of Giorgio Morandi’s œuvre in the United States, leading up to the 1940s.
Members Only: Carlo Zinelli (1916–1974) at the American Folk Art Museum
May 10, 2017
CIMA Members are invited to join us at the American Folk Art Museum for an exclusive tour of the first museum exhibition on Carlo Zinelli (1916–1974) in the United States, coinciding with the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of this revered and distinctive Italian artist.
The show highlights four distinct phases in Zinelli’s oeuvre and new scholarship, through a selection of fifty-five paintings (many displayed double-sided), audio recordings of Zinelli, a film, and images by Life magazine photographer John Phillips. The exhibition brings together artworks from the American Folk Art Museum and other private and public collections from the United States and abroad, notably the Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne, the Fondazione Culturale Carlo Zinelli, Verona, and the collection of Audrey B. Heckler, New York.
Carlo Zinelli, Untitled, 1961; gouache on paper, 19.75 x 27.5 inches (photo by Henri Germond © Collection de l’Art Brut)
CIMA IN DC! Giorgio de Chirico at the Italian Embassy
May 09, 2017
RETHINKING GIORGIO DE CHIRICO
Laura Mattioli in conversation with Renato Miracco
The Embassy of Italy and the Italian Culture Institute in Washington DC welcome Laura Mattioli, the founder/president of the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) in New York City, where the exhibition “Giorgio de Chirico – Giulio Paolini / Giulio Paolini – Giorgio de Chirico” is currently on view through June 24th. This exhibition, which features several Metaphysical masterpieces by de Chirico not seen in the United States in nearly half a century, alongside rarely seen later works by the artist, offers a new view of de Chirico—long perceived as the father of Surrealism—by looking at him through the eyes of a conceptual artist, leading contemporary artist Giulio Paolini, who has found inspiration in de Chirico’s work for very different reasons. Ms. Mattioli will be in conversation with Cultural Attache Renato Miracco discussing de Chirico’s fortunes in the United States, Paolini’s reading of de Chirico, and the exhibition currently at CIMA.
CIMA’s director Heather Ewing will offer a brief introduction to the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA), a non-profit research and exhibition center established in 2013 to promote new scholarship and dialogue around Italian twentieth-century art—through its annual exhibition, an international fellowship program, and a wide variety of public programming. This exhibition is the fourth at CIMA, following seasons dedicated to the Futurist Fortunato Depero (1892-1960), the sculptor Medardo Rosso (1858-1928), and the master painter and printmaker Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964).
LOCATION
Embassy of Italy – Auditorium
3000 Whitehaven St, NW
Washington, DC 20008
REGISTRATION & PHOTO ID REQUIRED
DOORS OPEN BETWEEN 5:30 PM AND 5:55 PM
BOOK YOUR PLACE HERE!
Other Avant-Gardes: Carol Rama, Marisa Merz, and Radical Art-Making in 1960s Italy
May 04, 2017
CIMA is pleased to co-present a program hosted at the New Museum, organized in connection with their new exhibition Carol Rama: Antibodies, and in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, currently showing Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space, on view at the Met Breuer. CIMA Members are entitled to a discounted friends & family rate.
This panel brings together scholars and curators to discuss the work of such luminaries as Carol Rama, Marisa Merz, and other artists from 1960s Italy, and is co-presented by the Met Breuer, the Center for Italian Modern Art, and the New Museum.
The New Museum’s exhibition “Carol Rama: Antibodies” and the Met Breuer’s exhibition “Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space” give long-overdue attention to two distinct artists who might be said to occupy, in the words of critic and curator Lea Vergine, “the other half of the avant-garde.” Addressing the cultural and sociopolitical landscape of 1960s Italy, this panel will consider how Rama and Merz, and other artists of their shared milieu, flourished despite the dominant masculinity of Arte Povera. Participants will address and rework the often tightly knit narrative of art that emerged from Italy in the 1960s, considering practices that variously invested in the body, domesticity, emotion, myth, and even pop culture.
Participants include Ian Alteveer, Curator, the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Claire Gilman, Senior Curator, the Drawing Center; Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director, New Museum; and Cristina Mundici, Art Historian, Archivio Carol Rama.
Please note: The program will take place at the New Museum on 235 Bowery.
Free Open House – Soho Arts Network’s Downtown Culture Walk
April 29, 2017
Downtown Culture Walk is a self-guided walking tour presented by the SoHo Arts Network (SAN), highlighting the non-profit art spaces in the SoHo and downtown neighborhoods.
On Saturday, April 29, members of SAN will open their doors for the Downtown Culture Walk, inviting participants to discover the non-profit art spaces in the neighborhood. Walkthroughs, talks, open hours, and other programming will be offered throughout the day for free or reduced admission.
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CIMA will host a free open house from 11am to 6pm.
At 3pm, there will be a conversation program with pioneering SoHo gallerist Annina Nosei and CIMA Fellow Fabio Cafagna. The program will touch upon the history of Annina Nosei’s gallery in SoHo in the 1980s and especially her relationship with Italian artists.
Free; no RSVP required.
Art in America is the media partner of the Downtown Culture Walk.
About the SoHo Arts Network:
The SoHo Arts Network (SAN) fosters collaboration between non-profit arts institutions and artistic leaders within the area of New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. Founded in 2014 by non-profit arts organizations, the network celebrates the rich history of SoHo’s unique creative community and advances the neighborhood’s continued cultural contributions to the lives of both residents and visitors. Further, it provides an important platform to increase awareness of the neighborhood’s continued importance as an arts district.
Members Only: A Special Italian Baking Demonstration by Chocolatier Pietro Macellaro at the International Culinary Center
April 28, 2017
CIMA Members are invited to join famed Pasticcere and Master Chocolatier Pietro Macellaro as he demontrates how he creates his special summer dessert, the “Cake Virginia”, which will soon be on the spring/summer menus at Il Gattopardo and The Leopard at des Artistes.
After the demonstration, Chef Macellaro will also invite each guest to sample his award-winning Italian chocolates, which are made on his property in beautiful, rural Cilento.
CIMA Members will receive a private invitation link to RSVP for this event
Not a CIMA Member? Join us!
Members receive free admission to CIMA, access outside of regular public hours, a copy of the annual catalogue, and invitations to exclusive events and receptions.
Giorgio de Chirico’s Willful Claustrophilia
April 26, 2017
Join us for a special talk on Giorgio de Chirico’s “willful claustrophilia” with Ara H. Merjian, professor of Italian Studies at New York University and author of the recent book, Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City: Nietzsche, Paris, Modernism.
With wooden fragments pressed close to the picture plane and set in shallow, cloistered spaces, Giorgio de Chirico’s so-called “Metaphysical Interiors” from Ferrara (1915-18) seem resigned to confinement. In his mid-century monograph, James Thrall Soby described the scenes as “still lifes …for which the word ‘claustrophobic’ does not seem too strong.” This description has stuck to de Chirico’s interiors ever since: a convenient counterpart to the presumed agoraphobia of his pre-war piazzas. A close reading of the paintings and their philosophical sympathies, however, tells a different story. And it is a story of willful claustrophilia.
“My room,” de Chirico wrote from Ferrara, “is a magnificent ship in which I can set off on adventures worthy of a stubborn explorer.” Even leaving aside the nautical pennants and maps that punctuate several paintings, these interiors posit the still and the static as means to exploration; they insist upon the willful constriction of space as the only path to mental transcendence. Continuing his self-appointed apprenticeship to Friedrich Nietzsche, de Chirico insisted in word and image upon the liberation of finitude. What Nietzsche called “the prison-house of language” forms not a hampering limitation, but rather – for a select few initiates – a means to far-flung exploration. Merjian argues that the unrelenting interiority of de Chirico’s Metaphysical still lifes burrows into the building blocks of architecture as a site of mental adventure, beginning with the wooden support of the canvas itself.
Ara H. Merjian is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at New York University, where he is an affiliate of the Institute of Fine Arts and the Department of Art History, as well as Director of Undergraduate Studies. He received his B.A. from Yale University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City: Nietzsche, Paris, Modernism (Yale University Press, My 2014), which garnered a College Art Associations Meiss/Mellon’s Author Award, as well as the forthcoming volume, Against the Avant-garde: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Art and Politics, 1960-75, for which he received a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Missed the event? Watch the video here!
New York, NY: Italian Art – A New Exhibition
April 19, 2017
About “New York New York. Italian Art: The Rediscovery of America,” a new exhibition in Milan
Join us to learn about a new exhibition opening this month in Milan at the Museo Novecento, New York, New York: Italian Art: The Rediscovery of America—which explores the contacts that Italian artists had with the United States in the 20th century and the role they played in the gradual internationalization of the art world. Former CIMA Fellow Raffaele Bedarida, now a professor at Cooper Union, will be in conversation with the curator of the exhibition, Francesco Tedeschi, a professor at the Università Cattolica in Milan.
The exhibition explores the relationship with the United States experienced by artists such as Fortunato Depero, Giorgio de Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Mimmo Rotella, and Ugo Mulas—covering movements from Futurism to Pop Art. Touching on some crucial moments in the lives and works of the protagonists of the show, the conversation at CIMA will focus on the importance of cultural exchange across the Atlantic and look at Americanism in the construction of Italy’s national identity as the United States emerged as a global power.
FREE, RSVP REQUIRED
MEMBERS ONLY: VISIT TO CHAIM GROSS HOME & STUDIO
April 19, 2017
CIMA Members at the Friends ($100) level and above are invited to enjoy a private tour and prosecco aperitivo of the home and studio of sculptor Chaim Gross (1904-91), today the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, a member with CIMA of the SoHo Arts Network. This historic Greenwich Village townhouse and artist’s studio space remains as it was during Gross’ lifetime. In addition to some 10,000 works by Gross, including sculptures, drawings, and prints, the foundation maintains an extensive archive and Gross’s large personal collection of African, Oceanic, Pre-Columbia, American, and European art. We will also view the temporary exhibition, Building Identity: Chaim Gross and Artists’ Homes and Studios in New York City, 1953-74.
CIMA Members will receive a private invitation link to RSVP for this event
Not a CIMA Member? Join us! Members receive free admission to CIMA, access outside of regular public hours, a copy of the annual catalogue, and invitations to exclusive events and receptions.
The Disquieting Muses: An Evening of Poetry Inspired by de Chirico
April 10, 2017
In celebration of National Poetry Month, join us Monday April 10 for a special evening of ekphrastic poetry* inspired by Giorgio de Chirico, subject of the current exhibition at the Center for Italian Modern Art. De Chirico’s painting Le Muse Inquietanti (The Disquieting Muses) of 1918, in particular — now on view at CIMA — inspired works by both Sylvia Plath and Mark Strand.
Poet Mark Wunderlich will read Sylvia Plath’s poems inspired by de Chirico’s paintings as well as a new work composed for the occasion. Jessica Strand will read Mark Strand’s poems inspired by de Chirico and speak of the role of art in her late father’s work. And poets Michael Dumanis and Mary Jo Bang will also read work inspired by de Chirico’s paintings.
*ekphrastic poetry is writing created in response to works of art.
Presented in collaboration with the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and with the generous support of the Maurice English Poetry Award. (more…)
