The monograph, published by Electa, is proposed as the first retrospective catalogue devoted to Vettor Pisani. It has been conceived in relation to, and on the same underlying principles, the two monographic exhibitions Eroica / Antieroica (Una retrospettiva) on the occasion of which the volume was published: in Naples, at Madre museum, and in Bari, at the Teatro Margherita, respectively the artist’s ideal or elective and city and his real or native city.
The catalogue is divided into two parts, which are specular and complementary: the first is a volume made up of a sequence of previously unpublished or republished essays and a selection of archival images; the second is conceived as the catalogue of the two exhibitions, with an extensive bio-bibliographical apparatus, four dictionaries-critical word lists, and images of the installations of the two exhibitions.
The exhibition at Madre — Museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina of Naples presented a substantial number of works, both historical and recent, retracing the artist’s whole output, from site-specific installations to drawings and collages, paintings on canvas and PVC to performative actions, photographs and films, and mixed media works, together with the essential supporting documentary materials.
The exhibition at Teatro Margherita in Bari was not so much a continuation as the opposite of the exhibition in Naples, exploring in particular the theatrical and performative matrix of Pisani’s artistic practice. To bring out the intimately anti-chronological, basically circular path of the artist, who eternally returned on himself, Pisani’s artistic practice, the sequence of contributions and images in the first part, is reunited by possible thematic axes, while the sequence of images in the second part inverts the order of the two exhibitions that it documents, starting from Bari and travelling to Naples and the island of Ischia.