It was Dr. Rita Canarezza, artist, researcher, Cultural Operator of Cultural Institutes, to inaugurate, Wednesday 20 October, the second cycle of lectures and readings to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the death of the Supreme Poet. The unprecedented and original conference on the relationship between Dante and contemporary Italian art, full of suggestive ideas and followed by a final debate, has at the same time updated the traditional
lectures of the Gallery and launches the second round of public lectures that will bring to completion the “Dante Year”.

By presenting numerous works by Luigi Ontani (of which the Gallery has long acquired a fairytale and enigmatic self-portrait), Canarezza investigated in depth the relationship between the figure of Alighieri and the tableaux vivant of the multifaceted Emilian artist. Performance, poor and conceptual art, a return to painting, photography and video: these are some of the guidelines on which the investigation was oriented. The speaker thus illustrated the aesthetic, philosophical and spiritual instances of Ontani’s disguise, who in his juggling self-portraits disguises himself as Dante (but also as Pinocchio, Don Quixote, Superman …), embodying and updating their icons, and together he re-elaborates the figure with Dadaist humor, playful and irreverent. A very welcome final gift were the words of Ontani himself, brought to those present by Dr. Canarezza together with some works to be exhibited next that the artist has exceptionally anticipated to the San Marino public.

The next appointment is for Wednesday 10 November: a very welcome return, that of the professor Maurizio Gobbi, well-known popularizer and interpreter of Dante’s songs in the Republic and former professor of History and Philosophy in the Upper Secondary School. At the Titano theater, at 9 pm, again for the series of lectures and readings that are held as part of the “Dante’s Year”, he will give a talk entitled: “Dante’s life – an autobiographical journey through his works”. Starting from the verses of the Comedy and from the citations of other Dante’s works, written and recited for the occasion, he 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 Italian courts after exile, from the meeting with Beatrice to death, after the conclusion of Paradise, in Ravenna.