Ponti

Italian pin-up artist Gabriele Pennacchioli (previously featured) works for a number of world-renowned animation studios. The women in Gabriele’s works differ radically from the traditional and classic pin-up images of women in that they are modern, feminine and confident.

More: Instagram, Artstation

Nel 1963, il fotografo e regista di New York Melvin Sokolsky (1933–2022) ha prodotto la serie di fotografie “Bubble” che ritraggono modelli che “galleggiano” in gigantesche bolle di plastica trasparente sospese a mezz’aria sopra la Senna a Parigi.

h/t: vintag.es

“La bolla della serie è realizzata in Plastivew ed è composta da due emisferi con una fessura da 1/8 di pollice per consentire il respiro. Quindi la bolla è stata appesa a un cavo molto sottile ma resistente. (Potrebbe anche reggere una Cadillac.) Questo è stato probabilmente uno degli scatti più facili che abbia mai fatto in vita mia perché non ci sono state interruzioni di capelli o trucco. Nessuno poteva toccarla nella bolla, quindi eravamo solo io e lei a creare le immagini”. – Melvin Sokolsky

Melvin Sokolsky era meglio conosciuto per le sue fotografie editoriali di moda per pubblicazioni come Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue e The New York Times. Il lavoro di Sokolsky non si limita a quel campo. Tre quarti delle sue fotografie stampate sono state per la pubblicità, che di solito non ha un sottotitolo. Verso la fine degli anni ’60 lavorò sia come direttore commerciale che come cameraman.

World – For the poet Octavio Paz it was “A poem that walks, which suddenly smiles and turns into a bird and then into a fish, and disappears”. Dali instead had crowned her “The most important surrealist female artist”.
Instead she wrote about herself: “If I were my thoughts, it means I could be anything from noodle soup, a crocodile, a corpse, a leopard, or half a liter of beer. If I were my feelings, then I would be love, hate, irritation, boredom, happiness, pride, humility, pain, pleasure. If you were my body, then I am the fetus of a woman who changes every moment. However, I, like the whole world, desire an individual identity “.
When Leonora Carrington wrote these words it was 1970. After more than 50 years, the key figure of Surrealism, who rebelled against power against hierarchies and conventions through her magical universe populated by humor, spirits and witches, continues to enchant the public.
Fans of her magical universe will meet her until January 15th in Denmark, at the ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, about twenty kilometers south of Copenhagen, where the largest exhibition in Scandinavia dedicated to the British painter and writer, organized in collaboration with Fundacion MAPFRE of Madrid, has just opened.

Leonora Carrington, Green Tea (The Oval Lady), 1942. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift from Drue Heinz Trust (exchange) 2019 © Estate of Leonora Carrington / VISDA. Unknown photographer

Over one hundred 100 works – including Carrington’s paintings, drawings, tapestries, sculptures and books, and works by artists such as Remedios Varo or Max Ernst – tell of an experimental artistic universe, rich in mythology, esotericism and feminist perspectives.

“Leonora Carrington’s artistic vision of freedom and equality – explains the curator of the exhibition Sarah Fredholm – is more relevant than ever in times of global warming, natural disasters and war. In response to the crises of our time, spirituality, the occult and the forces of nature are being cultivated more and more, for example through astrology, tarot and witchcraft. Carrington possessed incredible power and mystery. She remained unique, created her own version of Surrealism, and was not limited by either men or women. surrealist movement. As an artist, challenge our way of seeing the world “.

Leonora Carrington, The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg), 1947. Private collection © Estate of Leonora Carrington / VISDA. Unknown photographer

Intransigent and visionary, Carrington has in fact placed his freedom above all else. Moving away from a rigid bourgeois education, she reached Paris at the age of twenty to pursue a career as an artist. Within the inner circle of the surrealist movement, she met the painter Max Ernst and had a relationship with him. She then she, during the Second World War, she in a war-torn Europe, she flees her to Mexico, where she settled dealing with Mexican culture and religion.

Now, during his stop in Denmark, on the occasion of his first major exhibition in Scandinavia, the public will be able to follow Carrington’s life and career with key works arriving from England, the United States and Mexico, flanked by letters , photographs and major loans from private collections.

The artist’s interest in magic, alchemy, witchcraft overwhelms visitors making their way through fantastic characters in a state of perpetual transformation, while the boundaries between humans, animals and nature become increasingly blurred. What attracts is an art steeped in memories, from involuntary engagement in a psychiatric hospital in Santander, Spain, to his exile during World War II. The themes of confinement and transformation are well expressed in the work Green Tea (The Oval Lady), created by Leonora one year after her hospitalization. Everything revolves around the two horses tied to each other’s tails, while, under the earth’s surface, some beings recall the female figure wrapped in the foreground, the painter herself.

Leonora Carrington, The Artist Traveling Incognito, 1949. Rowland Weinstein, Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco © Estate of Leonora Carrington / VISDA. Photo: © Nicholas Pishvanov

Through a visual language full of poetry, Leonora Carrington faces human psychology, its change and renewal, opening the way to magical realms where everything is out of the ordinary. Inhabited by strong women, mythological goddesses, historical female figures and wise women, Carrington’s art drags us into the history of the occult, of alchemy, making us aware of how women have had great authority in many indigenous cultures.
If female characters claim power, oracles and alchemists become creatures with healing and magical powers, with access to unknown territories, capable of summoning new worlds.
With her art, Carrington directs a feminist critique of oppressive power hierarchies, as seen, for example, in the self-portrait The Artist traveling Incognito. The work contrasts with the trend of the surrealist movement dominated by men who tend to worship the female figure as a young, beautiful muse with a boundless imagination, capable of inspiring the male artist.
“I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse… I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning how to be an artist,” Carrington said in an interview, not very enthusiastic about the “muse” label.

After ARKEN, where it can be admired until January 15, the exhibition will reach the Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid.

Read also:
• In the dreamlike universe of Leonora Carrington, the surrealist of the 2022 Art Biennale

Florence – At number 3 of the ancient Via Larga, at Palazzo Medici Riccardi, an ancient bastion of the Medici, between whose rooms and studios modern collecting originated, Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo Il Magnifico would be delighted to see a large part of the Twentieth century through a rich selection of masters, from Paul Klee to Damien Hirst, on loan from art lovers of our time.
Until next January 8, in fact, the Florentine palace will host, in conjunction with the Florence Art Week, the exhibition entitled Twentieth century passion from Paul Klee to Damien Hirst. Works from private collections Florentine and Tuscan, a project for the Museo Novecento curated by Sergio Risaliti, promoted by the Metropolitan City of Florence and organized by MUS.E.
The goal is to make the great Renaissance tradition of collecting and patronage dialogue with the passion for the art of the twentieth century still strong today.

Twentieth century passion from Paul Klee to Damien Hirst. Works from private collections, Exhibition design | Courtesy Museo Novecento

In the city cradle of the Renaissance, which over the centuries has seen artistic events and those of private collecting intertwine, sowing a sensitive predisposition to the avant-garde and its most advanced experiments throughout the territory, a red thread links the ancient families of the Sassetti and Tornabuoni , the Medici and the Doni, the Gondi and the Rucellai to the private collectors of today.

In this anthology of eras and styles, visitors to Palazzo Medici Riccardi will be able to admire rare masterpieces by Paul Klee and de Chirico in dialogue with the Circus by Ottone Rosai, with the Abandoned objects in the forest by Alberto Savinio, and again with the works of Martini and Melotti, Burri and Fontana, with works by Warhol and Lichtenstein, Alighiero Boetti and Damien Hirst, with the Girolamo Savonarola by Ai Weiwei or the Couple by Cecily Brown.

Passion of the Twentieth Century from Paul Klee to Damien Hirst, works from private collections, Staging | Courtesy Museo Novecento

The succession of masterpieces will also see the stories of great art lovers alternate which will allow the modern public to learn more about the collector’s life, taste and ideals in a game of suggestions and meanings. On the other hand, it is thanks to collecting and patronage, which took root in the “rooms” and in the studios of Palazzo Medici, that the autonomy of works of art, curated, contemplated, appreciated for themselves, has been affirmed.

The first modern museums originated from the private collections, studios and salons of the great lords.
Developed during the Renaissance with the Medici family, central to the Italian cultural promotion, patronage was consecrated over the centuries to come with the presence of figures of the caliber of Stefano Bardini, one of the most eclectic and refined antiquarians and merchants of the his time, and the eclectic Frederick Stibbert. And thanks to collecting it is now possible to admire these masterpieces, in an extraordinary journey of rediscovery and deepening of the art of the twentieth century.

Passion of the Twentieth Century from Paul Klee to Damien Hirst, works from private collections, Staging | Courtesy Museo Novecento

“The Passione Novecento exhibition – explains Sergio Risaliti, director of the Museo Novecento in Florence and curator of the exhibition – will open in conjunction with the Florence Art Week and the International Antiques Biennial which, after the break dictated by the epidemic, will bring the great protagonists back to Florence of the antiques market, together with collectors from all over the world and representative figures of the art system and museums. In the same week, the Renaissance + award will also be presented again in its third edition, an award assigned to six eminent personalities from the world of collecting and patronage ”.

The exhibition can be visited every day, except Wednesdays, from 9 to 19.

Ottone Rosai, Circus, 1933, Oil on cardboard