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PRESS RELEASE FERNANDA PIVANO Viaggi, cose, persone When: 6 April – 18 July 2011 Where: Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery Milan, Corso Magenta n. 59 Vernissage for the Press: Tuesday 5 April at 12.00am Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery Inauguration: Tuesday 5 April at 6.30pm Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery “My aspiration is to be remembered for three lines I’ve written”, said Fernanda Pivano during an interview in 2001. This speaks volumes about the self-critical, self-mocking qualities of a much-admired, much-loved journalist, essayist and translator. Pivano was a complex figure, one of the true greats of the twentieth century, a woman that for sixty years acted as a cultural bridge between Italy and the United States. From 6 April to 18 July, Fernanda’s birthday, the Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery, in the Refettorio delle Stelline building in Milan, will be remembering the writer with the major exhibition “Fernanda Pivano. Viaggi, cose, persone” (Travels, objects, people), devised by Michele Concina and curated by Ida Castiglioni and Francesca Carabelli, with consultancy provided by Enrico Rotelli, who edited Fernanda Pivano’s “Diaries”, published by Bompiani. Pivano wrote and translated many more than those three lines, and indeed had a great many more still to write when she left us on 18 August 2009, at the age of 92, for those fragrant fields of eternity, as she herself put it. These are the lines that from Fernanda’s desk - “covered with papers to such an extent there was no space to rest as much as an elbow” – reverberated out towards generations of Italians, who without her would perhaps never have discovered the lines of Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and Gertrude Stein, or Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso and William Burroughs. Her literary career began in 1943, when Einaudi published the first Italian translation of Spoon River, under the guidance of Cesare Pavese, and of A Farewell to Arms, a work that at the time was banned by the Fascist regime, earning her a jail sentence. As soon as she was granted a visa, however, Fernanda headed for America to meet in person those great authors who had fostered her passion for freedom – those same authors she herself assisted into the realms of the “classics”, as indeed she also did over the years for the works of Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski, Erica Jong, Jay McInerney and Brett Easton Ellis, all of whom she “adopted” as a translator. It was during these travels that she met and made the acquaintance of American singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and Lou Reed. Above all, however, it was the encounter with Fabrizio De André that led her to affirm that “singer-songwriters are the poets of today”. It was this perception that awakened in Pivano – with a Conservatory diploma attesting to a decade of piano studies – the desire to meet in person those singer-sonwriters best loved by the young generation, such as Vasco Rossi, Jovanotti, Morgan, Vinicio Capossela and Luciano Ligabue, who recognised her ability to “transmit a culture we are in desperate need of”, one of crucial importance to generations of Italians. All of this is illustrated in the major exhibition staged in the Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery in the Refettorio delle Stelline, through original documents (some of them seen here for the first time), photographs, typed sheets and texts written by great authors. The exhibition features some moving poems, letters – especially those from Cesare Pavese, which have never been published – and the drawings dedicated to her by some of the outstanding figures of the last century, as well as the photographs from her travels and – from more recent years – the portraits by Guido Harari. Also on display are a number of particularly significant articles, such as “Grazie, Fernanda” by Jay McInerney, which appeared in the "New Yorker" magazine in 1995. During her long list of travels all over the world, from northern Europe to the United States, from Japan to the South Seas and from North Africa to Cuba, Fernanda Pivano also collected thousands of pieces of ethnic jewellery, some of which have been used by contemporary artists as a base for their research into shapes and materials. The exhibition features a fine selection of pieces of especial significance due to their contemporary design and the combination of materials used, as well as others designed for her by Ettore Sottsass and by Arnaldo Pomodoro, who also designed the plaque for the prestigious Fernanda Pivano Award. The jewels created by Pomodoro will be joined by a series of pop jewellery items from the Fifties and Sixties – some of them designed by Paco Rabanne and purchased by Fernanda Pivano, mostly in Paris – made from a variety of colours of plastic, with each one of the shapes transmitting fresh enthusiasm for a new age and a new material. Displayed alongside these will be a series of jewellery items in non-precious metals and stones, created by Italian artists and workshops, in particular in Milan. These pieces of costume jewellery express the formal research characteristic of the Sixties and Seventies, which Fernanda Pivano loved a great deal and wore often, demonstrating the curious nature of a woman with a passion for a wide variety of art forms. Together with the jewellery, her close relationship with Ettore Sottsass is testified to above all by the magazines they created together: East 128, the unpublished fourth issue of which is presented here, and Pianeta Fresco, as well as the volume C'era una volta un beat. These legendary examples of design d’auteur that today are considered authentic works of art were created with the collaboration of the greatest poets and writers of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Jack Kerouac. The exhibition layout, designed by Leo Guerra, is composed of a long, horizontal surface, measuring about 50 metres, that runs right along the gallery, lining up the “exhibits”, the testimonies, the travel souvenirs, the ethnic and pop jewellery from Fernanda Pivano’s collection, forming a composition that frequently intersects with photographs and documents from the archives, layouts of underground magazines and “instant design” pieces her artist friends dedicated to her. On the walls will be displayed photographs from throughout her lifetime, shown here life-size, and a specific on-site installation will be created by Marco Nereo Rotelli. The video area will host the short film Pivano blues, by Teresa Marchesi, the journalist and director who is making a documentary film on Fernanda Pivano, while the scenes from A farewell to beat, by Luca Facchini, bring back to life Fernanda’s legendary encounters with leading American writers. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by the Credito Valtellinese Group Foundation, featuring critical essays by Arnaldo Pomodoro, Fiorella Minervino, Guido Harari, Alba Cappellieri and Ida Castiglioni. Details of the exhibition Title FERNANDA PIVANO Viaggi, cose, persone Location Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery Corso Magenta n. 59 – Milan Duration 6 April – 18 July 2011 Vernissage for the Press Tuesday 5 April at 12.00am Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery Inauguration Tuesday 5 April at 6.30pm Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery Extraordinary opening Wednesday 5 April at 6.00pm Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery Opening hours and entry Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery Tuesday to Sunday 12.00am – 7.30pm Closed on Mondays FREE ENTRANCE Extraordinary opening: Monday 25 April Guided visits for groups of up to 25 people, advance booking required € 80.00 - groups € 60.00 - schools € 100.00 - foreign language Info and booking +39 0243.353.522 www.civita.it Informazioni al pubblico Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery tel. +39 0248.008.015 [email protected] - www.creval.it Press Office Studio ESSECI – Sergio Campagnolo tel. +39 049.663.499 [email protected] Exhibition created and organised by the Credito Valtellinese Group Foundation in collaboration with SEA SpA Devised by Michele Concina, curated by Ida Castiglioni and Francesca Carabelli and with the consultancy of Enrico Rotelli .