Gli anni. Chapter 1

Episodes of art history in Napoli from the 1960s to the present

19.12 — 19.05.2024

curated by Eva Fabbris
Hours and Tickets

Partecipant artists:
Carlo Alfano
(Napoli 1932 – 1990) / Oli Bonzanigo (Milano, 1989) / Benni Bosetto (Milano, 1987) / Luciano Caruso (Foglianise, 1944 – Firenze, 2002) / Federico Del Vecchio (Napoli, 1977) / Maria Adele Del Vecchio (Caserta, 1976) / Luciano Fabro (Torino, 1936 – Milano, 2007) / Dora García (Valladolid 1965) / Nan Goldin (Washington, 1953) / Helena Hladilova (Kroměříž, 1983) / Mimmo Jodice (Napoli, 1934), ma / Allan Kaprow (Atlantic City, 1927 – Encinitas, 2006) / Luisa Lambri (Como, 1969) / Mark Leckey (Birkenhead, 1964) / Valerio Nicolai (Gorizia, 1988) / Piero Manzoni (Soncino, 1933 – Milano, 1963) / Francesco Matarrese (Molfetta, 1950) / Ugo Mulas (Pozzolengo, 1928 – Milano, 1973) / Hidetoshi Nagasawa (Tonei, 1940 – Ponderano, 2018) / Vettor Pisani (Bari, 1934 – Roma, 2011) / Ugo Rondinone (Brunnen, 1964) / Andrew Norman Wilson (Medfield, 1983)

Gli anni features a dialogue between the Madre collection and major public and private collections, mainly from the city of Naples. Through emblematic works, the exhibition evokes significant moments and artistic productions that took place in this area, telling a collective story and celebrating shared memories.

For this first chapter, for example, Carlo Alfano’s work Delle distanze dalla rappresentazione, originally shown in 1969 at Lucio Amelio’s Modern Art Agency gallery and acquired by the Madre collection with funding from the Campania region in 2013, is displayed in the museum rooms. Along the exhibition path, Nord, Sud, Est, Ovest giocano a Shangai was instead conceived and presented in 1989 by Luciano Fabro at the Museo di Capodimonte, which is now collaborating on this exhibition as a lender, as is the Parco Archeologico di Pompeii, lending one of the photographs taken by Luisa Lambri at the House of Giulia Felice in 2020, in the context of the Pompeii Commitment project. Another outstanding feature is a series of photographs taken by Nan Goldin around Naples and the Sorrento coast between 1986 and 1996, three of which are on loan from the collection of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea. The Madre thereby underlines its central role in promoting research and collaboration across an authoritative inter-institutional network.

Equally important is the attention given to private collections and galleries throughout the city that have most profoundly contributed to the presence of artists in the area and the consequent production of internationally important on-site projects.

The title of the exhibition is inspired by the famous novel by Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022. In her book, the description of photographs and personal memories is transformed into an autobiographical fresco and a choral and historiographical chronicle. In Les années, Ernaux warns that images and private memories are destined to disappear, swept up in the flow of history; hence, this exhibition sets out to consider artworks as an antidote to the process of oblivion, as suggested by the author. The disappearance of imagery as evoked in the poetic opening pages of the book provided the starting point for the development of a concept that would lead to the definition of the exhibition logo by the Left Loft graphic design studio.

The narrative proposed by the exhibition, grouped around moments and episodes, follows a non-chronological structure that intends to reflect the fluctuating nature of human memory, offering the public a dynamic vision that proceeds by offshoots and cross-references. As evidence of the continually developing process of study on which Gli anni is based, additional exhibition rooms and works will be integrated into the exhibition itinerary after the opening, and other exhibition chapters will follow.

Confirming the attention that Madre has always paid to the artistic production of the present moment, the exhibition also features two artists exhibiting in Naples for the first time—Valerio Nicolai and Andrew Norman Wilson—and thus integrates two ‘exhibitions within the exhibition,’ the methodological premises of which (respectively “artist’s curatorship of the Madre collection” and an ‘archival exhibition’) will also be reiterated in subsequent chapters of Gli anni.

Federico Del Vecchio, an artist from Campania, used the Museum’s collection as a source of research material to devise the exhibition project La Chimera, which introduces the works as imaginative and symbolic constructions that fuse heterogeneous elements to create shifting meanings; works from the permanent collection of the Museo Madre—by Vettor Pisani and Luciano Caruso—enter into dialogue here with the works of artists from younger generations: Benni Bosetto, Helena Hladilová, and Del Vecchio himself.

Lācis/Benjamin, a standstill is an exhibition ensemble that explores the relationship between Lithuanian director, actress, and theorist Asja Lācis and German philosopher Walter Benjamin, bringing into dialogue three works by artist Dora García with a display of documents curated by Andris Brinkmanis and Valentina Di Rosa. The Museo Madre weaves a dialogue with the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ and the Goethe Institut Neapel, to mark the centenary of the first encounter between the two intellectuals on Capri in 1924. The project explores events fundamental to the evolution of the concept of history, their definition of Naples as a ‘porous’ city and the ramifications of feminist thought.

On display are works by Carlo Alfano (Naples, 1932–1990), Oli Bonzanigo (Milan, 1989), Benni Bosetto (Milan, 1987), Luciano Caruso (Foglianise, 1944 – Florence, 2002), Federico Del Vecchio (Naples, 1977), Maria Adele Del Vecchio (Caserta, 1976), Luciano Fabro (Turin, 1936 – Milan, 2007), Dora García (Valladolid, 1965), Nan Goldin (Washington, 1953), Helena Hladilová (Kroměříž, 1983), Mimmo Jodice (Naples, 1934), Allan Kaprow (Atlantic City, 1927 – Encinitas, 2006), Luisa Lambri (Como, 1969), Mark Leckey (Birkenhead, 1964), Valerio Nicolai (Gorizia, 1988), Piero Manzoni (Soncino, 1933 – Milan, 1963), Francesco Matarrese (Molfetta, 1950), Ugo Mulas (Pozzolengo, 1928 – Milan, 1973), Hidetoshi Nagasawa (Tonei, 1940 Ponderano, 2018), Vettor Pisani (Bari, 1934 – Rome, 2011), Ugo Rondinone (Brunnen, 1964), and Andrew Norman Wilson (Medfield, 1983).