Botero in Pietrasanta, Tuscany

Pubblicato il 19 Luglio 2012 da Beppe

Pietrasanta, the Versilia fashionable artistic town celebrates the eightieth birthday of Ferdinando Botero, the Columbian artist famous for his  oversized bronze sculptures with an amazing exhibition in  Piazza  Duomo and  in the nearby church and cloister of Saint Augustine. Pietrasanta is much cherished by the painter who has had here one of his many homes since the eighties.  An artistic tour  winds up in the center of this small town Botero has symbolically  protected at its entrance d  with his controversial  huge warrior.  About ten huge bronze statues most of them featuring  woman in many  classical poses, seated,  reclined,  standing or in the mythological attitude of Leda were accurately thought and placed by the artist-director. A big bronze  cat  on the steps of Saint Augustine’s Church   invites the visitor to get inside to admire other amazing works . The oversized figures both in sculptures and in drawings are his personal homage to Giotto and Masaccio he saw in 1952, on  his first approach to Florence. There he  first developed his own intuition,  the belief in extra sized figures which,  according to him,  enhance the existence of the object versus the contemporary flat painting denying five centuries’ artistic tradition. Botero loves  saying that artistic beauty  has nothing to share with the real one, thus referring to the aesthetic prototype of contemporary  woman.  What seems unpleasant in real life can become beautiful in  artistic domain.  One wants to believe him  when comfortably looking at his figures which seem to shroud the watcher. Their richness and abundance sound reassuring and we  want to trust this handsome  aged man whose good Italian doesn’t conceal his South American origins.  Medellin is his home town but he loves Pietrasanta, the friendly town which warmly  welcomed the artist more than thirty years ago. Take the chance to visit the exhibition lasting up to the beginning of September 2012,  profiting from the accommodation,  offered by Tuscany Holiday Rent in  a lovely cottage lately renovated, though faithful to its original features.

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The Renaissance Tour in Val di Chiana, Arezzo

Pubblicato il 8 Luglio 2012 da Beppe

The Little Big Museums’ project,  presided by Antonio Paolini,  director of the  Musei Vaticani, Rome,  on its 8th year  has set up a series of initiatives,  called the Renaissance Tour,  promoting the territory in and around Arezzo. Here on the footsteps of many great 15th century artists the event schedules guided tours to museums,  churches and other compelling sites  up to November the 18th 2012.

The towns involved are Arezzo,  Castiglion Fiorentino,  Civitella in Val di Chiana,  Cortona,   Lucignano,  Marciano della Chiana,  Monte San Savino,  thus focusing on the Val di Chiana,  the road leading from Florence to Rome.

In this spectacular corner of Tuscany an acclaimed artistic season allows a journey  to the sites where great  painters were born and lived such as Beato Angelico,  Piero della Francesca,  Bartolomeo della Gatta,  Luca Signorelli,  Donatello,  Andrea della Robbia,  Filippo Lippi. One can  see plenty of Madonnas with Child,  Vergin’s Assumptions,  Altar-pieces,  Annunciations, all partaking in that extraordinary  revolution of colours and forms which is usually defined as Renaissance.

The visit  is going to be  a hall of mirrors,  a  charade whose links are enthralling to  be  discovered in their harmonious unfolding. The event thus is  becoming a memory training,  urging us to contribute to  the maintenance of this heritage and shelter them from  the insults of times  and men’s and natural events’ damages. It  enhances, at the same time, the idea that the cultural roots have to deepen into their own environment which doesn’t allow any concentration in a chosen  site, like a museum for example, unless they break up the connections with the reality which  produced them. The only relationship established with the artwork should be its real knowledge which means experiencing it on the spot. That is why the altarpiece  called “Pala Marsuppini” painted by Filippo Lippi in the first half of the 15th century,  now belonging to the Musei Vaticani, Rome, has just moved back to its original site San Bernardo Church , Arezzo. Here it can restore an interrupted dialogue with the other masterworks in the area such as the Annunciazione of Beato Angelico,  the Magdalen by Piero della Francesca , the San Rocco of Bartolomeo della Gatta  just to mention some.

An event not to be missed. Let’s  leave for a while exotic beaches and spend some days in the Tuscan countryside for  an amazing  plunge into beauty profiting from the accommodations offered by Tuscany Holiday Rent.

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A glimpse into the American past in Palazzo Pitti, Florence up to January 2013

Pubblicato il 4 Luglio 2012 da Beppe

In the prestigious  Palazzo Pitti, Firenze, the last date of the comprehensive  scheduled project “Un Anno ad Arte”, on the fifth anniversary of Amerigo Vespucci’s death. This exhibition, called ”La Nuova Frontiera, Storia e Cultura dei Nativi d’America dalle Collezioni del Gilcrease Museum” (The new Frontier, history and culture of the native Americans from the collections of Gilcrease Museum, Oklahoma)  by Herman J.  Viola and Robert Pickering is dedicated  to the original inhabitants of  America, unjustly called Indians. The issue is journey,  which is meant to be a careful homage to the Florence- born explorer, who first realized  that the lands  he discovered were not parts of the West Indies, as Columbus thought.  He was facing a new world, which fairly would be later called America after him.  Counterbalancing the long sequel of prejudices and errors by European colonization from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century means to enhance the historical and cultural background of the native American tribes. They deserve to come out  to a  public larger than  the limited  anthropological research groups  thanks to the unparalleled, extensive and renowned collections of the Gilcrease Museum of  Tulsa,  Oklahoma.

William Thomas Gilcrease, an oil businessman, faithful to his partial Native American heritage, collected a tremendous amount of both artistic and crafted items of America’s original inhabitants. In the effort of establishing a broader awareness of the roots, he found in 1949 the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one of the most important centres for the study of the Native American history in the USA. Now it is jointly run by the Tulsa City Council and the local university.

The visitor of the Florentine show gets acquainted of a culture, too often defined wild, perceiving the richness and dignity of these peoples overshadowed by  colonists. A restoration process  which pairs another Italian exhibition on the same issue, held in Santa Giulia, Brescia in 2007- 2008,  together with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn.

Now in the Palazzo Pitti’s ”Galleria del Costume”, one is faced by the colorful arrangements of beaded- embroidered waistcoats and mocassins of the Sioux Lakota tribes, the Cherokee embroidered leather coats and impressive Navaho necklaces. They are perfectly able to stand there next to the permanent exhibitions of  the Renaissance dresses, worn by the Florentine Renaissance princes.

The other section of the exhibition, in the Andito degli Angiolini, offers a more historical perspective with oil paintings and photos by Edward Sheriff Curtis.

The mountains and forests of the Far West inspired artists such as William Robinson,  Leigh Joseph Henry Sharp and George Catlin who fixed on the canvas the backgrounds  where the Native Americans lived and fought.

Historically Interesting  records.

No disrupting effect between the hosting site and the Native American show.

The two worlds, so wide apart, don’t collide here.

The two cultures, joined historically and geographically by the Florentine 16th century explorer who bravely challenged the sea looking for knowledge and wider horizons,  can set up a dialogue beyond any possible Europe – centered  evaluation.

The new  world of Vespucci appears  to us  compellingly new,  being so close to the contemporary need of a sustainable standard of life which has to be respectful of  natural environment  and of its laws in order to survive.

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Florence Dance Festival at the Bargello from June 25th up July 22nd 2012

Pubblicato il 27 Giugno 2012 da Beppe

The Bargello, in the right center of Florence, famous for Renaissance sculpture as Uffizi is for painting,  boasts glorious origins having hosted in the 13th century  the major town institutions  such as the Capitano del Popolo , the Podestà or in the 16th century the  Capitano di Giustizia.

Its gorgeous  courtyard has become since  2009  the acclaimed backdrop of Florence Dance Festival, thus replacing sites like the Anfiteatro delle Cascine, the Teatro di Fiesole or Piazzale Michelangelo.

No better choice could have been done for this Florentine festival, which makes us think of  Avignone  first-rated performances. The event,  titled “Rediscovering a new world“ focuses on the issue of the journey, a homage to the fifth hundred anniversary of Amerigo Vespucci’s death by the founders and directors, the international dancer Marga Nativo and  the New York choreographer Keith Ferrone.  Among the guest companies Saint Peterborough Ballet,  Urban Collective from New York, the Spanish InterfereCiayTamashy or the Florentine Maktubnoir .

The startup  was on June 25th with “Celebration” by the Naples San Carlo Ballet   and “Bat” by Roland Petit’s on Strauss’ notes. The French singers such as Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel, Serge Gainsborough, Edith Piaf  are going to lead the performances of the Milan Ballet.  Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” could not be missing ,  his notes are going to inspire the Compagnia Raffaele Paganini.

But,  definitely, the core of the event is going to be, on July the 3rd “Excalibar Trilogy” jointly by Ferrone and Nativo themselves.

A special note to ” Not –Two is Peace” by Ferrone which becomes both an unerring gaze at reality and image of inner landscapes up to the conclusion, a  hymn to harmonious coexistence. All that through a professionally multimedia use of dance, music, art and lights  in an ongoing awareness of  Florence as permanent source of inspiration.

On top of everything passion  and a close engagement to reality in a framework resounding of Donatello, Cellini and Michelangelo.

Could you expect something more?

For further inquiries, please apply to Info@tuscanyholidayrent.com

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A timeless icon: Marilyn Monroe at Ferragamo Palazzo Feroni, Florence

Pubblicato il 23 Giugno 2012 da Beppe

On the fiftieth anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death  the Ferragamo Museum in Florence celebrates the timeless legend of the Hollywood star  with an exhibition called “Marilyn” up to January 28th, 2013.

It is meant to be the conclusion of a planned trilogy started in 1999 with the show dedicated to Audrey Hepburn and continued in 2010  with the one devoted to Greta Garbo. Salvatore Ferragamo has always kept a deep relationship between  movie system and  fashion since  1920,  enhancing  with his artistic products the style of many actresses. Now on Marilyn’s  death anniversary  the Museum celebrates her in  manifold facets. Her world is being revealed in its mixture of sensuality, research of success, frailty and  human contradictions. The final  image one perceives is not her striking face or sexy body but something more,  able to charm the  entire world. In front of  her   innocence words fail. A definition can’t easily be found out. The exhibition focuses on both  her private life and career arranging the items on show as essential elements of a whole. So the created expressly  Ferragamo shoes  become, paradoxically,  inseparable  elongations of her. Who can imagine something different from the orange Swarovsky encrusted stilettos worn by her in “Gentlemem prefer Blondes”,  the film directed by in 1953 by Howard Hawks or the white sandals in the cult shot  of her  skirt lifting up in “the Seven Year Itch” by  Billy Wilder  in 1955? They  are both  timeless icons,  memories out of stereotypes telling the essence and style of Marilyn, well established as  heritage of any movie fan’s imagination. Getting inside the exhibition one is overwhelmed by the photos by the greatest artists  able to fix her in classical portraits or in transfigured erotic images of purity,  everybody knows.  Any petty detail becomes here part of a system. Through the papers,  the interviews,  the films,  the scripts we get  into the world of the most famous blonde,  perceiving the feelings,  thoughts and  the unusual sense of  humour of an extraordinary  actress,  able to write down in her agenda everything,  included  her shopping dates, at Ferragamo’s in New York City. Photography,  movies,  art,  poetry all focus  on a fragile though strong  woman continuously swinging between the ordinary everyday life tasks and the ongoing  research of an inner balance.  Such a humanist reading of this icon could not find a better location than Florence,  so deeply rooted in  its renaissance past. Thence its legitimacy to offer its  homage to a  mythical character, mirroring herself into the  feminine prototype of  the Florentine Venus of the Uffizi.

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