FRANCO GUERZONI

Museo del Novecento presents the exhibition “Franco Guerzoni. L’immagine sottratta" (Franco Guerzoni. The stolen image), coordinated by Martina Corgnati, an insight into the work of the artist from Modena scheduled from 9 September 2020 to 22 August 2021.
The exhibition marks the return of Franco Guerzoni to the city where some of his main exhibitions were organised and continues the investigation carried out by the museum on the protagonists and movements that have marked the Italian art world in the second half of the twentieth century. The Archives room, located on the fourth floor of the Museo del Novecento, will host the works created by the artist in the last decade: a journey around the wall, a topos for Guerzoni. Initially, old walls with peeling paint, full of plasters and bulging, in precarious conditions due to cracks, scratches, protuberances, moulds and saltpetre, will be the first protagonists of photographic shots used as a support for his work; they will then be represented on the canvas: palimpsest-walls with multiple, evocative protuberances on which all the sophisticated personal archaeology of the Modenese artist developed. The images, real ruins or more frequently simulated and suggestively reconstructed through painting interact with works from the very early 1970s born from the collaboration with his friends Luigi Ghirri and Franco Vaccari, both photographers. The exhibition continues with Franco Guerzoni's latest research entitled Intravedere (Glimpse): small rooms of chalky material floating like open books, but whose image is hidden, precisely "stolen" from the observer's gaze. These works are supported by the book-works that have characterised Guerzoni's journey since the 1970s: from Libro dei Sogni (Book of Dreams) of 2009 to Museo Ideale (The Ideal Museum) of 2013. These books are not only to be looked at but to be "used", as precious in their rarity, with reflections of the many poets, critics and writers, friends who have always followed the artist's journey. In the exhibition, a showcase shows a labyrinth of photographic sequences, often unreleased, which tell of projects and aspirations dating back to his restless origins that the artist calls Irrisolti (Unresolved) and that represent the unripe and tender fruit of his journey into the artistic research.
The personal exhibition is enriched by a detailed book, published by Skira, with images of the works displayed, texts edited by the coordinator Martina Corgnati and by Adele Ghirri and useful materials to delve into the artist's work with a reconstruction of the ten-year period and important relationship he had with Milan, home of exhibitions, important galleries in the history of Guerzoni, as well as adventures and crucial encounters.
"Franco Guerzoni. L’immagine sottratta", coordinated by Martina Corgnati, is part of the "Aria di Cultura" event schedule of the Municipality of Milan, the plan of cultural initiatives that will characterise Milan in summer.