From Medieval Times to “900
Exhibition
The “Assonance/Dissonance” exhibition will showcase masterpieces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as Giordano, Bassano, Cardi, Redi alongside works by twentieth century Italian artists, including Pistoletto, Mondino, Paladino, Chia and Clemente, courtesy of the Sperone Westwater collection.
This juxtaposition of antique and contemporary art will bring to the fore the ways in which the skills and techniques of the old masters have been adopted by some of the most influential and avant-garde Italian artists of the twentieth century.
The timelessness of tradition and technique is definitely the theme of the exhibition, and the dominant undercurrent of all Italian art history. This element of the classic, like an underground river, periodically emerges above ground and reinforces its eternal relevance in completely new and different contexts. The exhibition aims at not only enticing the viewer with a variety of chronologically and artistically diverse pieces, but also demonstrating the common relationships among them and exploring new interpretations of classic elements. This exhibition will have the viewer considering the cross-genre and cross-generational uses of these core elements, and how these techniques have become the koine of Italian art.
The project is conceived by Gian Enzo Sperone, Riccardo Viale, Marco Voena, and the Italian Cultural Institute of New York.