Magazine

Terna, Italy’s major Energy Transmission Operator and primary owner of the Italian National High-Voltage Electricity Transmission Grid, and the Chelsea Art Museum presents an exhibition of artwork by Italian artists that were awarded the first Terna Prize for Contemporary Art. The goal of the Terna Prize is to open new avenues of discourse between culture and commerce, and to provide artists with a platform from which to be recognized by the global arts community. The Prize winners include artists of all ages, some internationally renowned and others relatively still unknown. The works, including nine photographs, three paintings and four mixed media works, were first exhibited at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome’s largest interdisciplinary exhibition venue, in November 2008.

Artists: Luigi Ontani , Francesco Arena, Andrea Chiesi, Riccardo Albanese, Elena Baldelli, Gabriele Bonato, Gabriele Giugni, Giovanni Ozzola, Laura Cantrarella, Rocco Dubbini, Raffaela Mariniello, Antonio Riello, Hôtel de la Lun

Adults $6, Students and Seniors $3, Members and Children 16 and under Free

The exhibit features original archive photographs available for the first time in the U.S. of royal families, presidents and Hollywood movie stars in their visits to Italy in the vibrant phase that film director Federico Fellini brilliantly described as the years of ‘La Dolce Vita’.

All photos are for sale: the aim is to raise funds for to benefit children victims of the recent earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy. Vintage Vespas, an old Fiat 500 and the brand-new Fiat 500 will be on display to complete the Dolce Vita experience

To view some of the photos and details I invite you to visit the event's website http://www.JourneytolaDolceVita.org">www.JourneytolaDolceVita.org 

On view through July 8, 2009

The Italian Cultural Institute  hosts an exhibition of the Florentine architect, sculptor and multimedia artist Giampaolo di Cocco. The theme of the exhibition and site specific installation “La Danseuse obsèdante 3” derives  from a 1911 painting  by the futurist artist Gino Severini .

Giampaolo di Cocco was born in 1947 in Florence, where he studied architecture and graduated in 1974. Beginning in 1973 he had his first group and solo exhibitions in Florence and later in many European cities, showcasing his  various painting techniques.

In 1977 he founded the magazine ABACO and collaborated to cultural   magazines, such as  “Alfabeta” and “Professione Architetto”.

From  1983 to 1987  Dicocco attended   the Design Polytechnic of Cologne; since  then he turned to sculpture creating a series of big size works, objects such as  boats, planes and  submarines, displayed as wrecks in relationship with unusual, provocative spaces .

The connection between these spaces and objects produced a strong wonder effect; drawing the attention of the art critics. To these series belong “Olympia-Zeppelin III and “Trivial-Catalina II ”at Villa Romana, Florence in 1992  to name a few.

As an architect specialized in town planning, in 2000 he began to work on  an installation for  the Deutsche Bank`s Park in Duisburg-Homberg. The project called “Car-Naval/He 111” is still to be completed.

Among the many prominent  art critics who reviewed Giampaolo di Cocco`s works, Pierre Restany wrote:

“di Cocco’s world is one of  gentle apocalypse, which keeps alive the essential  components of an existential poem through its explosive drama. Such a vision corresponds to our present condition: we are trying to find elements of a  new truth within the chaos of lost values.

Giampaolo di Cocco’s wrecks are both human and humanistic works of art.

 The most obvious sign of the sculptor’s humanistic awareness lies in the accurate  balance between the sculpture and its environment. The placing of these intrusive beasts within a daily context is a spectacular message of faith in and love for the truth of art,  which is in the strength of vital energy.

Will this truth saves us from the present chaos? The artist believes  so and we must congratulate him for this act of great responsibility”.   The opening will be held at the Italian Cultural Institute on June 17 at 6pm

The American Ballet Theatre is pleased to have international Italian ballet star Roberto Bolle join the Company as Guest Principal Dancer during ABT’S 2009 Spring Season at the Metropolitan Opera House,May 18 through July11. Mr. Bolle is scheduled to appear in Giselle(June 11), Swan Lake (June 26), Sylvia (July 1) and Romeo and Juliet (July 7 and 11).

“Décollage, literally the ungluing of paper, is the practice for which Mimmo Rotella is best known. He would furtively tear posters from public walls, glue the promotional materials to canvas, and then tear them again to create abstract compositions. The surface of the torn poster proved to be a site of rich discovery for the artist as it supplied him with a seemingly endless store of imagery, at first abstract and then increasingly related to mass consumerism and the cinema. The relative anonymity of décollage provided Rotella with an alternate model of artistic agency at a time when the rhetoric of heroic individualism and authenticity of late-modernist painting was being widely reconsidered within the European avant-garde” (Quotation from Meredith Malone, March 2009)

Terna, Italy’s major Energy Transmission Operator and primary owner of the Italian National High-Voltage Electricity Transmission Grid, and the Chelsea Art Museum presents an exhibition of artwork by Italian artists that were awarded the first Terna Prize for Contemporary Art. The goal of the Terna Prize is to open new avenues of discourse between culture and commerce, and to provide artists with a platform from which to be recognized by the global arts community. The Prize winners include artists of all ages, some internationally renowned and others relatively still unknown. The works, including nine photographs, three paintings and four mixed media works, were first exhibited at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome’s largest interdisciplinary exhibition venue, in November 2008.

Artists: Luigi Ontani , Francesco Arena, Andrea Chiesi, Riccardo Albanese, Elena Baldelli, Gabriele Bonato, Gabriele Giugni, Giovanni Ozzola, Laura Cantrarella, Rocco Dubbini, Raffaela Mariniello, Antonio Riello, Hôtel de la Lun

Adults $6, Students and Seniors $3, Members and Children 16 and under Free

The exhibit features original archive photographs available for the first time in the U.S. of royal families, presidents and Hollywood movie stars in their visits to Italy in the vibrant phase that film director Federico Fellini brilliantly described as the years of ‘La Dolce Vita’.

All photos are for sale: the aim is to raise funds for to benefit children victims of the recent earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy. Vintage Vespas, an old Fiat 500 and the brand-new Fiat 500 will be on display to complete the Dolce Vita experience

To view some of the photos and details I invite you to visit the event's website http://www.JourneytolaDolceVita.org">www.JourneytolaDolceVita.org 

The American Ballet Theatre is pleased to have international Italian ballet star Roberto Bolle join the Company as Guest Principal Dancer during ABT’S 2009 Spring Season at the Metropolitan Opera House,May 18 through July11. Mr. Bolle is scheduled to appear in Giselle(June 11), Swan Lake (June 26), Sylvia (July 1) and Romeo and Juliet (July 7 and 11).

Sicilian Artist Ernesto Graditi to Exhibit and Perform at Galerie St. George in Italian Cultural Festival

Graditi, who joins the gallery— which features pieces of art by mainly New York artists— brings with him an interesting and complex oeuvre, a product of his multidimensional focuses in painting, science, architecture and film.

“My collaboration with Galerie St. George gives me the opportunity to show my work and express my creative vision for the first time in the U.S.A.” stated Graditi, who is also a professor at the University of Palermo’s School of Literature and Philosophy.

The exhibition features works from his 2007 series “Morte e Resurrezione” (Death and Resurrection), which presents the viewer with a criticism of contemporary life through such themes as love, luxury and madness. A powerful sense of religion pervades the artist’s visual tableau, so that life and spirituality triumph over vice. People remain at the core of Graditi’s quasi-surreal landscapes—at times deserted or laden with colorful architecture and native flora and animals. This dualism opposing the Death of the body and the Resurrection of the soul is central in this series of fourteen paintings, paralleling the fourteen Stations of the Cross.

Ernesto Graditi’s figurative work can be characterized by his revisiting the past—often from varying thematic and technical approaches. We might consider “Normannesimo” (Normanism), Graditi’s [2004] series consisting of 50 oil paintings, as the height of his historic inquiries, of which people and cultures remain at the heart. Here, the artist explores the Norman occupation of Medieval Sicily, his longtime passion, which resulted in Sicily’s hybrid culture, composed of Arab, Byzantine, Southern Italian, and Northern European influences. Architecture, sculpture, and mosaics, as well as the celebrated Bayeux tapestry, attest to this cultural fusion and provide inspiration for this series, now in the Collection of the Office of Cultural Heritage of Sicily and on permanent display at the Museo Regionale di Storia Naturale (Regional Museum of Natural History). In a recent development, Graditi stitches these “Medieval” scenes onto coppole, traditional Sicilian caps, to further the cross-cultural theme.  Graditi’s Sicilian caps will be part of this exhibition.

“For me, the artist is a messenger of God and art is a means to instruct people about human existence.” Graditi likens himself, as seen from this quote, to the ancient masters: his drawings and paintings, expressing historic tales, ideas, and ancestral visions, exhibit technical mastery yet are easy for the public to understand. To these ends, Graditi takes part in public performances throughout Sicily, integrating design, dance, and music. On May 23rd, 2009 Ernesto Graditi will perform at Galerie St. George during his opening reception, thus bringing his artistic vision to the North Shore of Staten Island, in an Italian cultural festival complete with Italian music and cuisine.  This special event is free for all attendees.

Organizers of the event:  Ernesto Graditi Gary Brant Caterina Micalizzi Alexis Romano

The exhibit features original archive photographs available for the first time in the U.S. of royal families, presidents and Hollywood movie stars in their visits to Italy in the vibrant phase that film director Federico Fellini brilliantly described as the years of ‘La Dolce Vita’.

All photos are for sale: the aim is to raise funds for to benefit children victims of the recent earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy. Vintage Vespas, an old Fiat 500 and the brand-new Fiat 500 will be on display to complete the Dolce Vita experience

To view some of the photos and details I invite you to visit the event's website http://www.JourneytolaDolceVita.org">www.JourneytolaDolceVita.org 

The American Ballet Theatre is pleased to have international Italian ballet star Roberto Bolle join the Company as Guest Principal Dancer during ABT’S 2009 Spring Season at the Metropolitan Opera House,May 18 through July11. Mr. Bolle is scheduled to appear in Giselle(June 11), Swan Lake (June 26), Sylvia (July 1) and Romeo and Juliet (July 7 and 11).

The exhibit features original archive photographs available for the first time in the U.S. of royal families, presidents and Hollywood movie stars in their visits to Italy in the vibrant phase that film director Federico Fellini brilliantly described as the years of ‘La Dolce Vita’.

All photos are for sale: the aim is to raise funds for to benefit children victims of the recent earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy. Vintage Vespas, an old Fiat 500 and the brand-new Fiat 500 will be on display to complete the Dolce Vita experience

To view some of the photos and details I invite you to visit the event's website http://www.JourneytolaDolceVita.org">www.JourneytolaDolceVita.org 

On view through July 8, 2009

The Italian Cultural Institute  hosts an exhibition of the Florentine architect, sculptor and multimedia artist Giampaolo di Cocco. The theme of the exhibition and site specific installation “La Danseuse obsèdante 3” derives  from a 1911 painting  by the futurist artist Gino Severini .

Giampaolo di Cocco was born in 1947 in Florence, where he studied architecture and graduated in 1974. Beginning in 1973 he had his first group and solo exhibitions in Florence and later in many European cities, showcasing his  various painting techniques.

In 1977 he founded the magazine ABACO and collaborated to cultural   magazines, such as  “Alfabeta” and “Professione Architetto”.

From  1983 to 1987  Dicocco attended   the Design Polytechnic of Cologne; since  then he turned to sculpture creating a series of big size works, objects such as  boats, planes and  submarines, displayed as wrecks in relationship with unusual, provocative spaces .

The connection between these spaces and objects produced a strong wonder effect; drawing the attention of the art critics. To these series belong “Olympia-Zeppelin III and “Trivial-Catalina II ”at Villa Romana, Florence in 1992  to name a few.

As an architect specialized in town planning, in 2000 he began to work on  an installation for  the Deutsche Bank`s Park in Duisburg-Homberg. The project called “Car-Naval/He 111” is still to be completed.

Among the many prominent  art critics who reviewed Giampaolo di Cocco`s works, Pierre Restany wrote:

“di Cocco’s world is one of  gentle apocalypse, which keeps alive the essential  components of an existential poem through its explosive drama. Such a vision corresponds to our present condition: we are trying to find elements of a  new truth within the chaos of lost values.

Giampaolo di Cocco’s wrecks are both human and humanistic works of art.

 The most obvious sign of the sculptor’s humanistic awareness lies in the accurate  balance between the sculpture and its environment. The placing of these intrusive beasts within a daily context is a spectacular message of faith in and love for the truth of art,  which is in the strength of vital energy.

Will this truth saves us from the present chaos? The artist believes  so and we must congratulate him for this act of great responsibility”.   The opening will be held at the Italian Cultural Institute on June 17 at 6pm

The American Ballet Theatre is pleased to have international Italian ballet star Roberto Bolle join the Company as Guest Principal Dancer during ABT’S 2009 Spring Season at the Metropolitan Opera House,May 18 through July11. Mr. Bolle is scheduled to appear in Giselle(June 11), Swan Lake (June 26), Sylvia (July 1) and Romeo and Juliet (July 7 and 11).

“Décollage, literally the ungluing of paper, is the practice for which Mimmo Rotella is best known. He would furtively tear posters from public walls, glue the promotional materials to canvas, and then tear them again to create abstract compositions. The surface of the torn poster proved to be a site of rich discovery for the artist as it supplied him with a seemingly endless store of imagery, at first abstract and then increasingly related to mass consumerism and the cinema. The relative anonymity of décollage provided Rotella with an alternate model of artistic agency at a time when the rhetoric of heroic individualism and authenticity of late-modernist painting was being widely reconsidered within the European avant-garde” (Quotation from Meredith Malone, March 2009)