Mario Giacomelli, una retrospettiva. La Raccolta di Lonato
7 luglio - 29 ottobre 2023
An important retrospective dedicated to the extraordinary photographic bequest of Mario Giacomelli (Senigallia 1925 – 2000), one of the greatest interpreters of the 20th Century Italian Photography, is arranged by the City Management of Lonato del Garda in collaboration with Foundation Ugo Da Como from 7th July to 29th October 2023.
The evocative frame of the Captain Room in the Rocca visconteo veneta hosts it.
Very few are aware of the great treasure hidden in the rooms of the Civic Library of Lonato del Garda: it concerns 101 photographies of Giacomelli, belonging to the heritage of the town hall. After an exhibition hosted in the municipal palace of Lonato del Garda, in 1985 Mario Giacomelli gave to the community all the photographies by himself chosen for the exposition.
After the last exhibition of the Photographic Collection hold in 2004, the City Management established a working group lead by the Foundation Ugo Da Como for the arrangement of this exhibition, titled Mario Giacomelli, una retrospettiva. La Raccolta di Lonato del Garda. Of remarkable cultural value is curated by Filippo Maggia and avails oneself of the collaboration of Archivio Mario Giacomelli.
The exhibition presents 81 out of the 101 photographies property of the Municipality of Lonato del Garda, representative of different among the famous series which made famous the Mario Giacomelli’s photographic production, as for example that of the seminarists, landscaped immortalized from a high altitude and of Scanno.
Filippo Maggia writes in the catalogue:
«Some of the pieces in this collection serve as accomplished examples of the unique style that still today stands out Giacomelli’s photography: the plastic cut and the pictorial composition of the photograph “La fotomodella” (The model) of 1955; the dazzling, almost fluorescent, black and white released from the famous photograph of the boy from Scanno, the outcome of a long and reasoned expectation; the young seminarists taken from above, who appear suspended in an empty space, a floor of which Giacomelli erased almost all traces, imprinting the black of the subjects on the white background; the face of an elderly woman emerging at the base of a photograph where dark figures dance, realized with two negatives, an invented photograph to depict “il volto della morte” (the face of death) (3); the slightly out-of-focus child who gazes at the camera, focusing on the young girl behind him, forces the spectator to switch from one perspective plane to another; a celestial female face, with the hinted shadows of seagulls accompanying in a poetic, dreamlike flight, from the series “Caroline Branson da Spoon River” (“Caroline Branson from Spoon River”); the contrasting and severe photographs from the series “Presa di coscienza sulla natura” (“Awareness of nature”) of 1955-1984 years, meticulous metaphors of the pure and primordial relationship that Giacomelli advocates between man and nature.
A precious collection kept by the Municipality of Lonato del Garda, a gift of inestimable value left by a unique and, still today, unequalled photographer».
Katiuscia Biondi, the Director of Mario Giacomelli Archive writes in the catalogue:
«Giacomelli is great to create a new and extraordinary photographic language, made of a highly opposed white and black, surprisingly powerful for a period in which photography expressed in polite shades of grey. An unreleased language which favours technical and existential questions and to be from the beginning considered “crammed of errors”. But very soon those errors appeared to the reviewers as disturbing revelations of “pieces of real”, a real true as never before, eventhough the Neorealism of those years».
The exhibition has been realized thanks to a contribution of Foundation Cariplo.
The catalogue edited by SKIRA is curated by Filippo Maggia.
Opening hours:
from Monday to Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Fortress entry ticket:
5 Euro for the exhibition and the free tour to the Fortress (free for the inhabitants of the Municipality of Lonato del Garda)
10 Euro for the visit to the entire monumental complex of the Foundation Ugo Da Como
(Fortress and House Museum of Ugo Da Como)
For information and reservations
Telephon: +39 0309130060 email prenotazioni@fondazioneugodacomo.it
FONDAZIONE UGO DA COMO
