Members Opening Reception: “Transatlantic Bridges: Corrado Cagli, 1938 – 1948”
October 12, 2023, 6:00 PM
CIMA Members at any level are invited to join us for the opening reception of our new exhibition, Transatlantic Bridges: Corrado Cagli, 1938-1948.
This will be an opportunity to view the exhibition before it opens to the public, and to meet curator Raffaele Bedarida.
Light refreshments will be provided.
NOT A MEMBER? JOIN TODAY!
Please RSVP to lombardo@italianmodernart.org
Corrado Cagli: Opening Lecture by Curator Raffaele Bedarida
October 17, 2023, 6:00 PM
General admission: $15; Member & Students: FREE
Join curator Raffaele Bederida who will present CIMA’s new exhibition Transatlantic Bridges: Corrado Cagli, 1938-1948, and will analyze some of the key works exhibited in the show.
During the 1930s, Cagli was active as a painter working on public projects commissioned by the Italian fascist regime, including the 1937 Paris Expo, for which his paintings were part of an official government-sanctioned pavilion. It was only after 1937 that Cagli faced the full force of the regime as the number of critics and fascist party intellectuals attacking his work and persona grew.
As a Jewish and openly gay artist, starting in 1937, Cagli became the target of antisemitic attacks from reactionary critics within the fascist regime. As Italy promulgated its racial laws in 1938, Cagli left the country for the United States, where he became a protagonist of the New York émigré artistic scene.
Besides addressing the themes of war, exile, and discrimination, Raffaele will illustrate how the works in the exhibition also relate to Cagli’s multifaceted engagement with the New York Surrealist and Neo-romantic milieu, as well as his collaboration with George Balanchine and the Ballet Society.
Light refreshments will be provided!
About the curator: Raffaele Bedarida, PhD. Dr. Bedarida, associate professor of Art History at Cooper Union, is an art historian and curator specializing in transnational modernism and politics. Since he joined The Cooper Union full-time faculty in 2016, he has coordinated the History and Theory of Art program. Bedarida holds a Ph.D. from the Art History Department of the CUNY Graduate Center, New York as well as M.A. and B.A. degrees in Art History from the Università degli Studi di Siena, Italy. His research has focused on cultural diplomacy, migration, and exchange between Italy and the United States. He has also worked on exhibition history, censorship, and propaganda under Fascism and during the Cold War, from Futurism to Arte Povera. Since 2008, when he founded and curated the residency program Harlem Studio Fellowship in New York, Bedarida has actively promoted programs of international exchange for emerging artists. In addition to his academic and curatorial activities, Bedarida has regularly lectured on modern and contemporary art topics at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and MoMA. Bedarida has authored three monographs: Bepi Romagnoni: Il Nuovo Racconto (Milan: Silvana, 2005); Corrado Cagli: la pittura, l’esilio, l’America (Rome: Donzelli, 2018; English edition: CPL Editions, in press); Exhibiting Italian Art in the US. Futurism to Arte Povera (London-New York: Routledge, 2022). He has also edited many volumes, among which: Methodologies of Exchange: Twentieth Century Italian Art at MoMA, 1949, with Davide Colombo and Silvia Bignami, special issue of Italian Modern Art, January 2020; Gianfranco Baruchello: Painters Ain’t Butterflies (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2021); Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today, with Sharon Hecker (London-New York: Bloomsbury, 2022). His academic articles and essays have been published extensively in periodicals, such as Oxford Art Journal, International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, Italian Modern Art, and Artforum, and in exhibition catalogues. Bedarida’s upcoming publications is: Author, Corrado Cagli: Exile, Painting, America 1938-1947, monograph (New York: Primo Levi Center Editions, in press).
Public programming at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Tiro a Segno Foundation
Curzio Malaparte and the Visual Arts
October 19 - 20, 2023
General admission: Free
International Conference
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di New York; Center for Italian Modern Art; Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò – NYU
October 19-20, 2023
Italian author Curzio Malaparte (1898-1957) has been celebrated and ostracized worldwide for his controversial politics and for the impressive success of novels such as Kaputt (1944) and The Skin (1949). In his writings, Malaparte witnesses the fall of Europe during WWII by illuminating the racialized, gendered and biopolitical aspects of modern political power, even beyond fascism. At the same time, his name is indelibly associated with Casa Malaparte (1938-40, revised until 1950), the outstanding modernist mansion perched atop a solitary rock in Capri, which the author himself designed in collaboration with rationalist architect Adalberto Libera. A fabled subject and setting for countless photographers and filmmakers, Casa Malaparte has become a paradigm of luxurious minimalism and an international icon of Italian style, famously portrayed in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Contempt.
Malaparte’s unique interpretation of arts, architecture, and landscape in his visionary writing and beyond—from Casa Malaparte, to the piercing photographs he shot as a war correspondent in Ethiopia, the Balkans and Ukraine, to his anti-picturesque film The Forbidden Christ (1951)—are at the center of “Curzio Malaparte and the Visual Arts.” The conference will continue the tradition of the CIMA’s Study Days and the collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of New York and NYU’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò.
Concept
FRANCO BALDASSO, Bard College, New York
Advisory Committee
STEFANO ALBERTINI, Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò – NYU
FRANCO BALDASSO, Bard College, New York
MARIA PIA DE PAULIS, Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III
FABIO FINOTTI, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, New York
NICOLA LUCCHI, Center for Italian Modern Art, New York
PROGRAM
DAY 1 (October 19) ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI CULTURA – New York (686 Park Avenue, NYC)
9:30 AM – Light Breakfast
10:00 AM – Welcome Remarks by IIC Director Fabio Finotti
Introduction to the Conference by Franco Baldasso (Bard College)
10:30 AM – PANEL 1: Right before your Eyes: Malaparte’s Visual Poetics
Chair: Emmanuel Mattiato
Maria Pia De Paulis (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III)
Ut pictura Historia. La rivolta dei santi maledetti o della visività tra storia, testimonianza e poesia
Diego Pellizzari (Université Grenoble Alps)
Il re è nudo. Il ritratto di Himmler in Kaputt di Curzio Malaparte
Cécile Mitéran (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III)
Marmo e sangue: le statue ambigue di Malaparte.
Chiara Zampieri (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
Oggetti crudeli: Malaparte e la cultura materiale
1:00 PM – Lunch buffet
3:00 PM – PANEL 2: Encounters: Malaparte among Arts and Artists
Chair: Maria Pia De Paulis
Emmanuel Mattiato (Université Savoie Mont Blanc)
Malaparte e Prospettive: la rivista come specchio estetico di una stagione fiorente
Colin Marston (UCLA)
The Obscenity of the Unreliable Narrator: Visualization and an Aesthetic of Shock in Malaparte’s War Prose
Francesca Golia (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle/DFK Paris)
La Crocifissione di Lorenzetti. Per una lettura teologico-politica di un’ekphrasis malapartiana
5:00 PM – ROUND TABLE: Translating Malaparte into English
Moderator: Franco Baldasso (Bard College)
Stephen Twilley, translator
Jenny McPhee, translator, NYU
Edwin Frank, editor, NYRB Classics
7:00 PM – Dinner buffet
DAY 2 (October 20): CENTER FOR ITALIAN MODERN ART (421 Broome Street, 4th Fl., NYC)
9:00 AM – Light Breakfast
9:30AM – Welcome Remarks by CIMA Director Nicola Lucchi
9:45 AM – PANEL 1: A House Like Me: Casa Malaparte in Capri
Chair: Davide Spagnoletto (CIMA Fellow)
Marida Talamona (Roma Tre)
Casa Malaparte: a House on the Rock
Michelangelo Sabatino (Illinois Institute of Technology)
Casa Malaparte and the Landscape of Vernacular in Italy
Jean Francois Lejeune (University of Miami, Florida)
Islands (Architecture and Literature)
Davide Spina (ETH Zurich)
Unfit for Modernity
12:00 PM – Lunch buffet
1:00 PM – PANEL 2: Casa Malaparte and the Arts: Design, Photography, and Architecture
Chair: Filippo Bosco (CIMA Fellow)
Petra Liebl-Osborne (University of Miami, Florida)
Artists at Casa Malaparte
Alessandro Melis (New York Institute of Technology)
Determinismo e non-determinismo in architettura: l’esempio di Casa Malaparte
Simone Sfriso (TAM Associati)
Casa Malaparte’s Legacy in Contemporary Architecture
Cherubino Gambardella (Università della Campania)
The Impossible Malapartes: One House, One Thousand Architectures
DAY 2 (October 20): CASA ITALIANA ZERILLI MARIMO’ – NYU (22 W. 12th St., NYC)
5:00 PM – Welcome Remarks by Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò’s Director Stefano Albertini
PANEL 3: The Archivio Malaparte at Biblioteca di Via del Senato in Milan: Sources for the Study of Malaparte’s Cinema and Visual Culture
Chair: Franco Baldasso
Carla Maria Giacobbe (Biblioteca di Via del Senato, Milan)
Malaparte and Cinema: Drafts and Projects from the Author’s Archive
Federico Oneta (Biblioteca di Via del Senato, Milan)
Archivio Malaparte: A “Visual” Panorama
6:00 PM – Introduction to Curzio Malaparte, The Forbidden Christ (Il Cristo proibito, 1951): Jeffrey Schnapp (Harvard University)
6:30 PM – Screening of The Forbidden Christ
8:30 PM – Dinner buffet
Organized by:
In Collaboration with:
