Announces Spring 2021 Program

Cold Spring, New York – January 29, 2021 – Magazzino Italian Art announces today a new slate of programming to premiere throughout the winter and spring. Including digital programs and in-person exhibitions, the museum will host an artist talk with Mel Bochner, a scholarly lecture series examining collaboration in the movement, a 2700 Route 9 new series of public programs exploring diversity in Italian art and culture , and a new Cold Spring, NY 10516, USA exhibition dedicated to the work of sculptor, muralist and designer Costantino Nivola, Tel +1 845 666 7202 among other notable initiatives. Magazzino’s upcoming season reflects the nonprofit’s [email protected] commitment to fostering new scholarship of and public engagement with Italian art and culture from the 1960s to present day. Follow Magazzino on social media: @magazzino “We are thrilled to introduce Magazzino Italian Art’s 2021 year of programming. After #MagazzinoItalianArt the challenges faced in 2020, we are proud to embark on a year of renewed activity, a program we feel embodies our cultivation of a strong commitment to the exploration of Media Contact USA concepts of diversity, inclusivity, and the value of collaboration,” says director Vittorio Juliet Vincente Calabrese, “Through this series of programs and exhibitions, we seek to amplify voices [email protected] and figures outside of traditional art historical narratives and see this reconfigured 212 348 6800 / 646 640 6586 curatorial and scholarly approach as a pillar for the advancement of fuller perspectives and analyses of subject matter we seek to make more known to our audiences.” Press Office Ambra Nepi More information on each program and how to participate follows below. AMBRA NEPI COMUNICAZIONE [email protected] Resonance and Revelation: My Italian Days + 39 348 654 3173 January 29, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. EST Mel Bochner in conversation with Tenley Bick on Bochner Boetti Fontana Press Office SPAIN María Pardo de Santayana Launch of New Artist Book by Bochner and Noire Gallery, : [email protected] LANGUAGE IS NOT TRANSPARENT (BABBLE), 2020. +34 687 859 857 Join American artist Mel Bochner in conversation with art historian and former Costantino Nivola Magazzino Scholar-in-Residence Tenley Bick (Assistant Professor of Global Untitled, 1953. Contemporary Art, Florida State University) as they discuss the “odd resonances” Sand-cast, 30.8 x 50.1 x 2.6 in. Bochner found between his work, American art, and Italian art of the 1960s and 1970s Loaned by the Family of Costantino that are captured in the exhibition Bochner Boetti Fontana. The program will be Nivola. Photo by Marco Anelli. streamed live on www.magazzino.art/magazzinodacasa/resonance-and-revelation- my-italian-days. A floor sculpture, made out of a Pythagorean arrangement of stones, then hazelnuts, then shards of Murano glass, discovered in a cardboard box in ’s former studio. Ping pong rallies to the Fibonacci series with and verbal back-and- forths with . Shared interests in language, systems, and wit.

Bochner has been at the forefront of since the mid-1960s. Less well known, however, are the artist’s exhibitions and intersections with artists in Italy during the formative decades of his career. During his “Italian days,” Bochner exhibited and worked all over Italy—from Bari to Turin, Anacapri to . The works on view at Magazzino reflect these intersections and shared interests in language, systems and wit.

In tandem with this conversation, Magazzino Italian Art will launch the Bochner’s latest artist book, Language Is Not Transparent (Babble), 2020. Published by Noireditore in Turin, here Bochner makes use of the page as an alternative space. Using the Leporello format, the viewer can experience the work in a seamless continuum in unfolding the accordioned pages. Language Is Not Transparent (Babble) translates the original English statement into 14 different languages creating an illegible tower of Babel. Exposing how language and meaning shifts in different cultural contexts and across translation, this work becomes more poignant in the current social and political landscape. For more information about the publication, contact [email protected].

Pensiero Plurale New Multi-Year Series Curated by Ilaria Conti

Since its inception, Magazzino has been devoted to fostering a multidisciplinary and culturally open discourse through the arts and shaping cultural proximity between Italy 2700 Route 9 and the USA. In an ongoing commitment to its communities and the civic urgencies they Cold Spring, NY 10516, USA face, Magazzino inaugurates Pensiero Plurale, a new series of programs curated by Tel +1 845 666 7202 Ilaria Conti. The project explores diversity in culture and the arts from a multidisciplinary [email protected] perspective, involving artists, scholars, and cultural practitioners in a multi-year series of conversations that shed light on shared questions and critical approaches across Italy Follow Magazzino on social media: and the United States. @magazzino #MagazzinoItalianArt BLAQ•IT: Representing Blackness in Italy February 16, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. EST Media Contact USA A conversation with Fred Kuwornu Juliet Vincente [email protected] Virtual screening of Fred Kuwornu’s Blaxploitalian: 100 Years of Blackness in Italian 212 348 6800 / 646 640 6586 Cinema on magazzino.art/magazzinodacasa from February 14 – 16, 2021.

Press Office ITALY Filmmaker, scholar and activist Fred Kuwornu will lead a live-streamed conversation on Ambra Nepi the visual histories of Blackness in post-war Italian culture. Inaugurating a new multi-year AMBRA NEPI COMUNICAZIONE series entitled Pensiero Plurale, organized by Magazzino Italian Art and curated by Ilaria [email protected] Conti, Kuwornu will address issues of diversity and the complexities of representation + 39 348 654 3173 through the lens of his films. For over a decade, Kuwornu, an Italian-Ghanaian independent scholar, has been involved in narrating and analyzing the experience of Press Office SPAIN the African diaspora in Italy from historical, sociological, and political perspectives. María Pardo de Santayana Utilizing examples of visual culture ranging from the 1930s to 2020s, Fred will illuminate [email protected] conceptions of Blackness underlying contemporary Italian culture. While speaking to the +34 687 859 857 specificities of the Black Lives Matter and anti-racist and citizenship rights movement in Italy, Fred will shed light on how younger generations of creatives, activists, and entrepreneurs have created positive change and established new methods of cultural production in their fields.

To accompany the live talk, from February 14, 2021 through February 16, 2021, Magazzino will share access to Fred Kuwornu’s film Blaxploitalian: 100 Years of Blackness in Italian Cinema on magazzino.art/magazzinodacasa. This diasporic, hybrid, and critical documentary describes the representation of Blackness in Italian cinema from 1915 to present day. From the perspectives of Afro-Italian; African-American; Afro-Caribbean and African diasporic actors, a population seldom heard from, the film discloses the personal struggles actors faced in establishing a career. More than documenting the history of Blackness in Italian film and media, Blaxploitalian is a call to action, shedding light on the entanglement between lack of media and socio-political disenfranchisement.

Arte Povera: Art of Collaboration Spring Lecture Series Curated by Teresa Kittler, Magazzino Italian Art’s 2020-2021 Scholar-in-Residence March 20 – May 1, 2021

The 2021 Lecture Series titled Arte Povera: Art of Collaboration re-examines what has traditionally been considered a male dominated art movement by examining collaboration and creative partnerships of figures associated with it. This series turns its attention to specific friendships and partnerships within the grouping to consider the extent to which collaboration forms part of the narrative of artistic production in Italy in the post-war period; contributors reflect on the ways in which dialogue and reciprocal ways of working transform our understanding of artistic practice; ask whether it is possible to think beyond the trope of the ‘muse’ when addressing the contribution of women as partners in the work of this period; and consider how exchanges with partners and critics visibly shaped the work of otherwise well-known male figures. These questions are explored through a number of case studies that include the artistic duo Mario and —the only couple officially recognized as belonging to Arte Povera—alongside more informal exchanges such as that between Alighiero Boetti and Anne-Marie Sauzeau Boetti, and the longstanding friendship established between 2700 Route 9 and the art critic, Carla Lonzi. These case studies will be framed within Cold Spring, NY 10516, USA a broader reflection on these themes in literary and artistic production in the post-war Tel +1 845 666 7202 period in Italy. [email protected]

Follow Magazzino on social media: Details on each program and lecturer follow below: @magazzino #MagazzinoItalianArt The Power of Two: Inter-Gender Dialogue, Couples and Creative Partnerships in 20th-Century Italian Culture Media Contact USA March 20, 2021 Juliet Vincente Professor Lucia Re, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Italian at UCLA [email protected] 212 348 6800 / 646 640 6586 This talk traces the paradigms, patterns, challenges and rewards of inter-gender dialogue and creative partnership across literature and the arts in 20th-century Italian Press Office ITALY culture. Starting with the Gabriele D’Annunzio-Eleonora Duse collaboration in the Ambra Nepi theater at the turn of the century, the talk will progress to fascist-era artistic couples AMBRA NEPI COMUNICAZIONE and conclude with a look at artists and writers of the post-World War II period. Although [email protected] women fought to move beyond traditionally subordinate roles, the age-old paradigms + 39 348 654 3173 of woman as Muse on one hand, and of Pygmalion as the artist creator and educator of woman on the other, remained powerful and pervasive in Italy well into the twentieth Press Office SPAIN century. Yet even while operating largely within these restrictive male paradigms, women María Pardo de Santayana writers and artists found ways to challenge and subvert them, sometimes together [email protected] with men. In the early 1970s, feminists such as art critic Carla Lonzi and visual artist +34 687 859 857 promoted separatism as a necessary prerequisite to establish women’s autonomous creativity. While these took different forms, dialogues across the gender divide and collaboration within artist couples continued to foster both male and female creativity in ways that are yet to be fully explored and understood, and that may require rethinking conventional definitions of aesthetic production. Mutually Impressed and Distanced: Luciano Fabro’s Creative Collaborations with Women April 3, 2021 Dr. Sharon Hecker, Independent Scholar and Curator, Milan

Dr. Sharon Hecker examines Luciano Fabro’s creative collaborations with women through photographs, videos and unpublished letters related to his art. Spanning from Fabro’s early collaborations with Carla Lonzi and Marinella Pirelli on the experimental performance video Indumenti (1966), to his sustained but less visible collaboration with his daughter, Silvia, and wife, Carla, throughout his career, Hecker will explore Fabro’s engagement with these individuals as both creative partners and subjects. Fabro’s imaginary alliances with mythical female figures such as Penelope and historical subjects like Nadezhda Mandelstam will provide further insight. All these collaborations relate to the idea of fidelity in a relationship, a theme that occupies an important place in Fabro’s art. Subsequently, this leads to Fabro’s notion of “commitment” as associated to memory, artistic expression, and one’s own creative process. According to Fabro, this involves the need for a productive separateness and distance that is necessary for differentiation. The lecture will underscore the complex dynamics at play between artist, artwork, critics, family members, and society at large.

Alighiero e Sauzeau Boetti April 17, 2021 Dr. Teresa Kittler, Magazzino Italian Art’s 2020-2021 Scholar-in-Residence

Dr. Teresa Kittler’s talk reflects on Boetti’s approach, paying close attention to his relationship with his wife, the feminist art critic, Sauzeau-Boetti. Kittler examines 2700 Route 9 Sauzeau-Boetti’s longstanding contribution to the research and aesthetic decisions Cold Spring, NY 10516, USA made by Boetti throughout the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on work explicitly co-authored Tel +1 845 666 7202 with her (Classifying the thousand longest rivers in the world (1977)), as well as more [email protected] informal contributions by Sauzeau-Boetti to underscore their artistic exchange and ‘partnership,’ the term she used to describe her relationship with the artist. Follow Magazzino on social media: @magazzino Also, in the late 1960s, Boetti’s practice became preoccupied with concepts of duality #MagazzinoItalianArt and collaboration. Early in his career, he rechristened himself “Alighiero e Boetti,” doubling his identity while establishing dialogue and exchange as a pillar of his creative Media Contact USA process; for example, his co llaboration with Afghan embroiderers on series such Juliet Vincente as Mappe. [email protected] 212 348 6800 / 646 640 6586 Communion and Prophylaxis: Mario and Marisa Merz May 1, 2021 Press Office ITALY Dr. Leslie Cozzi, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs at The Baltimore Ambra Nepi Museum of Art AMBRA NEPI COMUNICAZIONE [email protected] Dr Leslie Cozzi discusses the early sculpture and later work on paper of Mario Merz + 39 348 654 3173 and Marisa Merz, lynchpins of the Turinese Arte Povera milieu. By analysing individual works in light of contemporary geopolitics, developments in Italian feminism, and the Press Office SPAIN new domestic landscape of the period, the talk will explore how together the husband- María Pardo de Santayana and-wife pair engaged in a dialectic that enabled them to respond productively to [email protected] one another’s practices while still maintaining their individual points of view. Paying +34 687 859 857 particular attention to the problematic of separatism and the professional challenges facing women artists in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, the talk will offer a new reading that recasts Marisa Merz’s well-documented interest in alchemy and communion in terms of contemporary developments in reproductive health technology. Nivola: Sandscapes May 8, 2021 – January 10, 2022 Magazzino Italian Art

This special exhibition dedicated to the work of Sardinian sculptor, muralist, and designer Costantino Nivola explores the artist’s unique process of sandcast sculpting. Featuring a selection of approximately 50 works from the early 1950s to the 1970s, including sandcast reliefs, sculptures, and rarely seen maquettes of his most important architectural commissions, this focused presentation will examine the artistic process, range of influences, and notable impact that Nivola had on modern urban architecture and design.

Born in Sardinia, Costantino Nivola (1911 - 1988) began his career as a graphic designer in Milan. In 1938, he was forced to flee Italy with his German-Jewish wife, Ruth Guggenheim, following the introduction of racial laws under Mussolini’s regime. The couple arrived in in 1939 and quickly became part of its flourishing art scene, counting artists such as Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Franz Kline among their close friends. They eventually settled in the hamlet of Springs on the East End of Long Island, which became a renewing source of inspiration for Nivola.

Nivola: Sandscapes examines the sand-casting techniques that the artist developed in the late 1940s, merging his overlapping interest in sculpture, , graphic design, and Sardinian iconography. His method comprised shaping wet compacted sand into molds and then filling the negative form with a plaster-sand mixture to dry, resulting in abstract sculptural forms that reveal the artist’s interest in the natural world. Nivola continued to evolve his technique over time and experimented with different materials, replacing the 2700 Route 9 plaster with durable concrete enabling him to create larger-scale reliefs. Cold Spring, NY 10516, USA Tel +1 845 666 7202 Curated by Magazzino’s 2020-21 Scholar-in-Residence, Teresa Kittler, with Chiara [email protected] Mannarino, and organized in collaboration with the Nivola Foundation and with the support of the Embassy of Italy in Washington D.C., this exhibition will examine new areas Follow Magazzino on social media: of Nivola’s practice and biography, especially relating to his identity as an Italian @magazzino immigrant to America in the Post-war period. #MagazzinoItalianArt About Magazzino Italian Art Media Contact USA Located in Cold Spring, New York, Magazzino Italian Art is a museum and research Juliet Vincente center dedicated to advancing scholarship and public appreciation of postwar and [email protected] contemporary Italian art in the United States. The nonprofit museum serves as an 212 348 6800 / 646 640 6586 advocate for Italian artists as it celebrates the range of their creative practices from Arte Povera to the present. Through its curatorial, scholarly, and public initiatives, Magazzino Press Office ITALY explores the impact and enduring resonances of Italian art on a global level. Ambra Nepi AMBRA NEPI COMUNICAZIONE Meaning “warehouse” in Italian, Magazzino was co-founded by Nancy Olnick and [email protected] Giorgio Spanu. The 20,000 square-foot museum, designed by Spanish architect Miguel + 39 348 654 3173 Quismondo, opened its doors in 2017, creating a new cultural hub and community resource within the Hudson Valley. Press Office SPAIN María Pardo de Santayana Admission is free to the public. [email protected] +34 687 859 857