Where and when
Book presentation curated by Davide Lacagnina
Speakers Michele Dantini e Claudio Pizzorusso
The authors will be present at the meeting
Cosmopolitan, “lover of the rare” and convinced supporter of “exceptional” artists and writers, Vittorio Pica was a central figure of the art system in Italy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Prolific writer for national and international magazines and newspapers, long-time collaborator of the Venice Biennale and then its general secretary in the 1920s, commissioner for the foreign section of the International Fine Arts Exhibition in Rome in 1911, he was among the very first to write in Italy of impressionism and symbolism or of authors long misunderstood and derided such as Rodin or, later, Modigliani.
This volume investigates the most diverse interests of the Italian critic, from painting to theater, from decorative arts to literature, from graphics to early avant-garde research, with particular attention to the effects of his action in the broader context of the history of taste and culture. European at the turn of the century.
Texts by Gabriella Bologna, Margherita Cavenago, Enrico Crispolti, Maria Flora Giubilei, Leo Lecci, Anna Mazzanti, Marzia Pieri, Luca Quattrocchi, Livia Spano and Alessandra Tiddia.
Davide Lacagnina
He is a senior researcher at the University of Siena, where he teaches History of Contemporary Art Criticism in the master’s degree course in History of Art and History of Art Criticism in the School of Specialization in Historic Artistic Heritage. He has carried out research activities at the Unversitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, the INHA in Paris and the Mart in Rovereto. Among his study interests predominate in-depth studies on landscape painting in Italy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Through the landscape. The image of Sicily between painting, photography and literature (1861-1921), Palermo 2010), on symbolism, and in particular mode on Gustave Moreau’s painting, on surrealism (Surrealism and its surroundings, Rome 2010, with E. di Stefano and G. Ingarao), on Italian art between the two wars (Images and forms of power. Art, criticism and institutions in Italy between the two wars, Palermo 2011), with particular attention to the relationships between historiography, militant criticism and collecting.