Rita Canarezza opens the second part of Dante’s year with the story of Dante from Ontani
The second cycle of lectures and readings will begin on Wednesday 20 October to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the death of the Supreme Poet. The “Dante Year” is thus resuming, which will once again see new cultural and educational realities of our Republic as protagonists, within a heterogeneous program in terms of themes and suggestions, aimed at consulting the multiform and inexhaustible richness, transdisciplinary by definition, of Comedy, works and the figure of Dante. Promoter and organizer of the events, the San Marino Committee for the celebrations of the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri which, established under the aegis of the Secretariat of State for Education and Culture, counts among its members, the Embassy of Italy in San Marino, the Cultural Institutes, the University of Studies, the Higher Secondary School, the San Marino National Commission for Unesco and the Dante Alighieri Association. Leading the conference “I TABLEAUX VIVANT DI LUIGI ONTANI” will be Dr. Rita Canarezza, who will present two important works by the famous contemporary Italian artist: Dante from 1972 and L’uccello all’appello del Cappello, the latter acquired in the Collection of the State of San Marino in 2002 following the exhibition curated by the Galleria Nazionale Castelli in Aria in 1992. To contextualize the first work, the famous tableaux vivant by Luigi Ontani will be retraced, filmed and photographed performances, in which Ontani presents himself in various ways: from Pinocchio to Dante, from San Sebastiano to Bacchus, from Garibaldi to Shiva. After these performances of the 70s, he continues with the same attitude also in the realization of the sculptural formalization in ceramics and painting. In the work The bird to the appeal of the hat – watercolor on paper from 1995 – it is possible to imagine that Ontani portrays himself, disguising himself in the costume of a medieval jester to represent first and foremost the role of the artist, who in all eras is the ‘inventor and “handing – actor” of creative narratives.
Luigi Ontani (Vergato, Bologna, 1943) is one of the main Italian artists and one of the most important artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Nonconformist and multifaceted, he uses his own body both as a performer – in an autobiographical and representative way – and by experimenting with the most traditional and manufactured techniques (photography, painting, sculpture with different materials: porcelain, blown glass, papier-mâché, wood). He began his artistic career in the seventies, emerging for his Tableux vivants (living paintings). These are filmed performances and photographs, in which Ontani dresses the likeness of characters: from Pinocchio to Dante, from San Sebastiano to Bacchus, from Garibaldi to Shiva, passing from classical mythology to religious iconography. In this period formalizations of the work are elaborated through small films and the use of watercolor photography. From the Eighties onwards, his research will be directed to the production of works in watercolor on paper and sculptures mainly in ceramics. For many years he was the leading artist of the Gallery’s exhibition activity
Fabio Sargentini’s Penthouse in Rome, an avant-garde and experimental space of international importance. He makes frequent trips to India, Indonesia, Japan and Mexico, transporting the aesthetic horizon of these cultural visions in his visual representations and performances. Numerous solo and retrospective exhibitions have been dedicated to Luigi Ontani over the years at important galleries and museums around the world such as: MoMA PS1, New York; De Appel, Amsterdam; Sonnabend Gallery, New York; Lucio Amelio, Naples; ICA, London; Kunsthalle, Basel; International Museum of Ceramics, Faenza. He is also present in various editions of the Venice Biennale: in ’72, ’78, ’84, ’86, ’95 and 2004. He lives and works in Rome. Rita Canarezza, artist, cultural operator, curator, researcher, is currently in charge of the Performative Archive and project coordination of the San Marino National Gallery, as Cultural Operator of the Cultural Institutes of the Republic of San Marino since 1992.
The next appointment of the Dante Year is set for Wednesday 10 November with a very welcome return: Professor Maurizio Gobbi, former Professor of History and Philosophy in the Secondary School Professor, well-known popularizer and interpreter of Dante’s songs in the Republic, who, starting from the verses of the Comedy and from the citations of other Dante’s works, written and recited for the occasion, will reconstruct the life of the Supreme Poet, tracing his existential, intellectual and poetic itinerary, from his birth in Florence to the wanderings for the courts after his exile, Italian from the meeting with Beatrice to his death, after the conclusion of Paradise, in Ravenna. It will then be the turn of Professor Meris Monti, Wednesday 24 November, who in the conference “Light is given to you for good and malice and free will” will explore the theme, dear to Dante, both from a civic, existential and eschatological point of view, of freedom, a “gift” for men and, as we will see – in parallel with the libertas bequeathed by the saint to the future Republic – to communities and states.
The cycle will close the concert evening of Wednesday 1 December, curated by Maestro Marco Capicchioni, “Dante in musica. Composers inspired by the Poet ”. The talented students of the Musical Institute will perform various pieces from the classical and contemporary repertoire, linked, by themes and suggestions, to the figure and work of Alighieri, thus celebrating the mass to music of the genius and imagination of the great Florentine poet. All appointments, with free admission, will be held at the Titano Theater, in San Marino City, at 21:00.