In Rome a tribute to Fabrizio Clerici with the exhibition ‘Surrealism and Fantastic Painting in Italy’
Until 31 October 2022 in Rome the Laocoonte Gallery and the W. Apolloni antiquarian gallery promote a tribute to the art of Fabrizio Clerici, of which in 2023 will fall the thirtieth anniversary of his death
The art of Clerici expressed in his eighty years of existence and his personality have aroused the enthusiasm of great writers, from Leonardo Sciascia, Alberto Savinio, Dino Buzzati, to Jean Cocteau. The exhibition is divided into location five to celebrate an artist of great importance not only for Rome, who knew how to celebrate and glorify for his part, but also and above all for the very elegant way in which he managed to weave his Italian spirit into the warp of cosmopolitan great taste from the immediate post-war period on.
The great painting by Fabrizio Clerici – W. APOLLONI GALLERY – Via Margutta 53 / B
In the context of the antique gallery W. Apolloni between furniture and antiques it will be possible to admire various works. Among all, the vast diptych “Pro-Maenad” (1973) stands out, where the bronze horse of Artemision – a Hellenistic masterpiece recovered from the sea, now in the National Museum of Athens – bursts hotly into the metaphysical solitude of an empty room, reaching a power with a supernatural image, as if the equine demon in Füssli’s “The Nightmare” had been repainted by Magritte.
… At Cinque da Savinio – DRAWING CABINET – Via Margutta 53b
The 39 original drawings that gave life to that masterpiece of Fabrizio Clerici’s cultural divertissement which is “… at five from Savinio” are exhibited in the Cabinet of drawings adjacent to the W. Apolloni Gallery. I, drawn by hand, almost always with a fine red marker, drawings from a single preparatory notebook for the famous publication entrusted in 1983 to the edition of Franca May. These are drawings that revive the ancient friendship between Savinio and Fabrizio Clerici, who was the author of the tables and the client of that illustrated volume. When Clerici had the volume of illustrations “Alle Cinque da Savinio” printed with a preface by Leonardo Sciascia, everyone saw, in the ornithological repertoire in 48 plates, in which – birds of all races interpreted the scenes of daily life as in “tableaux vivants” the ceremonies of a vanished bourgeois humanity – an extreme exercise in the genre of the self-portrait: not in representing oneself, but all others as oneself.
The Graphics by Fabrizio Clerici – ANCIENT / COONTEMPORARY LAOCOONTE SPACE – Via Margutta 81
In the space Ancient / Contemporary Laocoon A precious selection of drawings and lithographs by Fabrizio Clerici is exhibited. The oldest work on display is an ironic “Self-portrait as a Martinican General” (1932), in which Clerici presents himself in the bizarre uniform of an operetta caudillo. Among the other works presented here, there is a series of lithographs from 1942 with a fat sign that recalls the making of Savinio, among which there is the poignant “End of the Omenoni” which imagines the ruin of the stone giants that support the facade of the Milanese palace that belonged to the sculptor Leone Leoni.
Eugene Berman and Fantastic Painting in Italy – LAOCOONTE GALLERY – Via Monterone 13
The first room of the Laocoonte Gallery is entirely dedicated to the art of Eugene Berman, of whom a quarantine of works has been gathered including black and red ink drawings, watercolors, tempera and pencil sketches. They range from “Capricci” which have imaginary fountains as their subject, to archaeological landscapes elaborated during the artist’s travels in Italy and the Middle East, to figures of women, dreamy evocations of their own wife transfigured into a mythological figure, sketches for scenographies and opera costumes.
In addition to the room dedicated to Berman, another is dedicated to the artists who with Berman and Clerici have “the same” koinè inhabited by the same universe of dreams, fantasy and visionary imagination to which the exhibition is dedicated. It begins, among others, with the indisputable forefather and initiator of all surrealism, the great designer Alberto Martini (1876-1954), already the subject of monographic exhibitions at the Laocoonte Gallery in Rome and London. Then there are Stanislao Lepri (1905-1980) and Leonor Fini (1907-1996), who with Clerici have constituted an ideal artistic constellation for tastes, affections and oddities. Andrea Spadini (1912-1983), son of the painter Armando, sculptor and ceramist of great skill and happy imagination.
The Fantastic Karel Thole – LAOCOONTE GALLERY – Vicolo Sinibaldi 5
Dutch Carolus Adrianus Maria Thole is educated in the art school of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Graphic designer, illustrator, poster designer, fresco painter and stained glass designer after the second world championship, he left Holland to move to Milan in 1958, in the midst of the Italian economic boom.
On display about fifty of Thole tempera in the exhibition dedicated to Clerici with the desire to show up close the extraordinary pictorial technique with which the Dutch artist has been able to master a “medium” such as tempera as few have been able to at the time our. The tricks of the avant-garde, cubism, surrealism, optical, pop, are found in the extraordinary eclecticism of Karel Thole to obtain a unique grounded style inimitable and always coherent, able to amaze and amaze the viewer.
FABRIZIO CLERICI, SURREALISM AND FANTASTIC PAINTING IN ITALY
An exhibition promoted by the Laocoonte Gallery in collaboration with the W. Apolloni Gallery
In five locations in Rome:
W. Apolloni Gallery – Via Margutta 53b
Cabinet of drawings – Via Margutta 53b
Laocoonte Ancient / Contemporary Space – Via Margutta 81
Galleria Del Laocoonte – Via Monterone 13
Galleria Del Laocoonte – Vicolo Sinibaldi 5