Week at Novecento: from book presentations to the travelling reading club

“Cuba. Vivir Con”published by Silvana Editoriale is a photo book that will be presented on Wednesday, December 11 at 6.30p.m by which the photographer Carolina Sandretto tells the theme of the family.

After the Cuban Revolution of 1955, the government put in place a sistem of redistribution of housing, transforming big single-family houses and palaces, into social housing shared by numerous families, known as Solares, multi-familiar living spaces that reflect the complexity of the contemporary cuban society.

In four years of travel, working with a camera of the 50s, Carolina Sandretto has visited these confined spaces that many Cubans are forced to share with their numerous families, investigating different familiar realities and revealing the life that flows into the Solares. The photographies depict people in small rooms furnished with little, able to communicate the precarity of a life condition forcibly shared. Sandretto, who in her work, nourished by experiences in field of non-profit and of documentary photography, deepens themes like time, memory and abandonment, in this project takes full advantage of the potential of color, giving to the whole project a particular and vibrant tone.

The book of Marina Giordini (edited by P.I.E ‐Peter Lang Bruxelles) is entitled “Růžena Zátková. Un’artista dimenticata” that on Friday, December 13 at 6p.m will be presented at Museo Novecento by the Artistic Director Sergio Risaliti, Barbara Cinelli and Ludovica Sebregondi in the author’s presence.

The volume retraces the life and artwork of Růžena Zátková (České Budějovice 1885 – Leysin 1923), bohemian artist generally associated to Italian Futurism, but sometimes closer, for style and artistic sensitivity, to russian avant-garde. Beautiful, cultured, refined, tireless traveller and weaver of privileged relationships with the most prestigious names of her time, Růžena Zátková appears as a pivotal figure in the esoteric Rome of the second decade of 19th-century. The research work of the author, conducted with the investigation of documents and unpublished works, led to the discovery not only of various works of great value by Zátková, but also of two works by Natalia Gončarova now exposed for the first time at the exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi of Florence, dedicated to the russian artist.

The meeting is open to all and the discussion will develop assuming that the participants read privately the book: those latter will determine, with their interventions, the ramifications of the debate, whose order will be guardanteed by a moderator. Biamonti (1928-2001), making a reference to Eluard, intends his work like an allervoir to then donner à voir. One of the characters of the book is traced on the friend Ennio Morlotti, painter present in the Museo Novecento’s collection. The travelling reading club aLtre storIe meets, in the afteroon of every second Saturday of the month in places like universities, hospitals, foundations, art galleries, museums, but also libraries, caffè, private houses and cultural associations.

Last, always on Saturday 14 (at 2p.m) the Cloister of the Museo will host a musical moment curated by the conservatory Luigi Cherubini which is part of the programme of Strings City (the festival that reunites florentine musical institutions, which takes place on December 14-15), with the title “Duettando nel Novecento”. Guitar and flute (M. Ravel, J. Ibert, T. Takemitsu, M. Castelnuovo-Tedesco).