The magnetic force of the Alps meets the pulsating energy of the great nineteenth-century cities to guide the virtuous brush of Giovanni Segantini, the “mountain bear” with an impetuous and poetic character at the same time, towards the deepest and most bewitching paths of beauty.
It happens on Sky thanks to the documentary Segantini – Back to nature, where Filippo Timi gives voice and face to the painter from Arco.
This and much more in the week on TV that has just begun.
Giovanni Segantini, The two mothers, 1889, Milan, GAM (Gallery of Modern Art)
Sky Arte celebrates ten years with a hidden Renaissance
Thursday 24 November a double appointment accompanies the Sky public in the footsteps of two great masters. At 13.05 Segantini – Back to nature pays homage to one of the most illustrious painters of the Italian nineteenth century, in constant oscillation between divisionism and symbolism.
Directed by Francesco Fei, with Gioconda Segantini, Annie-Paule Quinsac, Franco Marrocco, Romano Turrini and with the special participation of Filippo Timi, the docu-film reveals the singular and extraordinary story of the eccentric master and his innate ability to feel the nature as a source of artistic and spiritual inspiration.
The small screen invites you to catch new details of works such as The girl who knits the stocking of the Kunsthaus Zurich, The two mothers, Noon in the Alps and the famous Triptych of Nature of St. Moritz, and still to travel the streets, villages, valleys and alpine landscapes that marked the work and soul of an artist capable of bewitching even Vasilij Kandinskij.
Paolo Uccello protagonist of The Great Masters broadcast on Sky | Courtesy Sky
It is enough to stay on Sky Arte to make a time leap of four centuries, face to face with the one who is considered the predecessor of Piero della Francesca. At 21.15 “Grandi Maestri”, the Sky Arte series dedicated to painting that tells the life of famous artists through their masterpieces, takes us into the art of Paolo Uccello, a virtuoso of perspective, one of the many tools with which he created his representation of the world, poised between exception and rule, disorder and order.
The art historians Gaia Ravalli and Andrea De Marchi will talk about the painter of the generation of Masaccio and Brunelleschi, commenting on the frescoes of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, the Chapel of the Assumption in the Cathedral of Prato and exploring numerous tables exhibited in the largest museums in the world.
Sunday 27 November a special anniversary bursts onto the small screen. With over 250 original productions and over 600 hours made, in ten years Sky Arte has promoted and valorised 50 Italian cities and 380 places of artistic interest, over 450 cultural events and more than 150 national artists. And on the air it celebrates with a spearhead: the Sky Original production exclusively on Sky Arte, Sunday at 21.15, streaming only on NOW and also available on demand, which leads the public to discover the African presence in art.
The hidden Renaissance. African presences in art | Courtesy Sky
Starting from the portraits of the most famous Afro-descendant, the first Duke of Florence, Alessandro de’ Medici, passing through the representations of people reduced to slavery or of illustrious African ambassadors, up to the portraits of gondoliers, knights, religious, swindlers – fabric of Renaissance society – the documentary tries to trace interesting identity stories by leafing through works and documents. Just dive into the frescoes by Sandro Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel to notice Ethiopian dignitaries visiting the Pope, or observe the sacred representations of Filippino Lippi, Mantegna and Ghirlandaio in the rooms of the Uffizi, to identify subjects of color, inspired by people met in everyone’s life the days. Even the paintings of Carpaccio and Veronese in Venice, Titian, Pontormo, Michelangelo and Vasari return faces of characters whose names are preserved in historical archives that speak of dates, events, testimonies of the most diverse experiences.
Conceived and written by Francesca Priori and directed by Cristian Di Mattia, the documentary brings together for the first time an international team of experts who shed light on the lives of African and Afro-descendant people who lived in the Renaissance, reconstructing their identity and their role in the society, revealing an aspect of this extraordinary era that has hitherto remained hidden.
The historical reconstructions are enriched by the animated illustrations created by TIWI. The narration is accompanied by the original soundtrack composed by Alain Diamond and Victor Kwality, which combines Renaissance themes, traditional African instrumentation and electronic sounds.
Art Rider in the Marches, from Montelabate to Pergola | Courtesy Rai 5
With Art Rider to discover the hidden Brands
Adventure on Rai 5 rhymes with Art Rider. Wednesday 23 November at 21.15 the fourth episode of the format which delves into the lesser-known art places in Italy, conducted by the young archaeologist Andrea Angelucci and produced by GA&A Productions, in collaboration with Rai Cultura, stops in the Marche, leafing through a itinerary on the border between the northern Marches and Umbria and which will restore the value of the patronage in art. What drives great personalities to commission artists to create great masterpieces? Wednesday’s episode will be a journey to discover the artistic heritage linked to the war fought by lords and lords, among masterpieces, fortresses, soldiers of fortune. Directed by Francesco Principini and texts by Paolo Fazzini and Chiara Vannoni and by Andrea Angelucci himself, the episode will touch on various locations, sometimes unexplored or shrouded in legends.
On Arte tv Albrecht Dürer and the mystery of self-portraits
At the age of 13, with the help of a convex mirror, Albrecht Dürer made his first self-portrait. On the other hand, the artist born in 1471 in Nuremberg, the “heart” of the Holy Roman Empire, also went down in history for his very precocious talent. At the age of fifteen he had the courage to leave his father’s goldsmith’s workshop to enter the studio of the painter Michael Wolgemut. It will be the young Dürer’s passion for engraving, a technique developed fifty years earlier, that will favor the diffusion of his works, while long stays in Basel and Venice allow him to study perspective and the masters of the fifteenth century.
On Arte TV the film Albrecht Dürer: the mystery of self-portraits, following 12 innovative masterpieces of the painter as a common thread, he traces his career by celebrating his genius.
Read also:
• The other Segantini. Previews from a major exhibition
