Indepth Arts News:
"Alberto Sughi: The Drawing and the Image"
2006-04-14 until 2006-05-21
Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Arezzo
Arezzo, ,
IT Italy
The Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Arezzo, patronised by the
Ministry of Culture and Heritage, will be holding a large retrospective
exhibition of works by Alberto Sughi, one of the greatest Italian artists
from the second half the twentieth century, from April 14 to May 21, 2006.
From his first exhibition, with Corrado Cagli and Marcello Muccini at the
Il Pincio Gallery in 1954, Rome, to his contributions to the Biennale
exhibition in Venice and the Quadriennale in Rome (of which he has also
been Chairman), to the large retrospective exhibitions held in various
Museums in Italy, Europe and America, his artistic development has always
been sustained by public acclaim and by support from the most qualified
art critics.
"Alberto Sughi: The Drawing and the Image" gathers together 50 works
(all
on paper over canvas) deriving from private collections as well as the
artistís own collection.
The exhibition has been organised by the art historian Giovanni Faccenda
and sponsored by the Spagnoli Gallery in Florence under the patronage of
the Cultural Heritage Office of the city of Arezzo.
The exhibition catalogue (from which the following extracts have been
taken)
contains reviews by Giovanni Faccenda, Luigi Cavallo and an interview with
the artist by Sergio Zavoli.
Luigi Cavallo: "The artistís world is dense in hidden plots. In this
recent group of works, the canvas is crossed by tremblings and
insistences, his brushstrokes emptying and refilling the climate of
tension that develops between the figures: the faces of whom are part
human, part theatrical mask, in an interpretation that is both classical
expression and modern icon. The subjects both offer and hide themselves,
withdrawing into their own valves of mystery."
Giovanni Faccenda: "Curiosity makes us wonder how much autobiographical
material there is in these works, expressing the texture of reality as the
verse of existence. This aspect is marginalised by scenes that are
themselves enigmatic, as if sealed in a glass cruet, whose veiled
transparency recognizes an implicit refusal of every artifice or
substitute. The regular recurrence of the portrayal of symbolic elements
(mirror, mask, dog, phone call) is more obviously intriguing, expressing
a dense allegory of intuitions and mysterious premonitions, in which you
can just distinguish weary strains of jazz music, the refined fragrances
of citrus fruit and lavender, the unmistakable smell of burnt tobacco on
the surface of whiskey or brandy glasses. Rooms containing figures like
sand, an hour glass. The effect is remarkable. Sughiís creative commitment
during these months has, in fact, given us aristocratic, significant and
exhaustive results."
Sergio Zavoli: "Although your pictures generally have a strong figurative
basis, they have also been praised for their assonances, connections,
atmospheres recalling other forms of expression, deriving from other art
forms such as the cinema. The world of Antonioni, for example - founded
upon the bourgeois, uneasy and mutual inaccessibility of relationships
between people - or of Scola, almost a socio-analyst, who transforms
facial expressions into introspection, between psychology and reality,
poetry and document, or of Fellini, who was the first to call your work
"the art of image, in the sense of both the single frame and the story".
Translation by Joelle Mary Crowle
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