Classic Reloaded: Enzo Cucchi and Remo Salvadori in conversation with Bartolomeo Pietromarchi

To mark the opening of the exhibition Classic Reloaded. Mediterranea at Villa Audi, curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, artists Enzo Cucchi and Remo Salvadori will be in conversation with the curator to delve into the central themes that animate Italy’s current artistic debates. With a selection of works from the MAXXI collection, the exhibition fosters an in-depth analysis of the connection between classical tradition and contemporary artistic research in Italy.

This exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation as a traveling project across multiple cities of the Mediterranean basin, as part of the "Italy, Culture, Mediterranean" program. Classic Reloaded. Mediterranea brings contemporary Italian art and its unique relationship with the ancient to the international art scene.

It is within this context that the Sursock Museum in Beirut hosts the meeting between Enzo Cucchi and Remo Savadori. Cucchi is one of the main protagonists of the historical core of Transavanguardia, and the author of compositions of great symbolic intensity and experimenter in the use of materials. Remo Salvadori is the son of the generation of Arte Povera and Conceptual Art, from which he inherited the attention to the exhibition space and to the relational attitude of the works. The dialogue between the two artists, moderated by the Director of MAXXI Arte and curator of the exhibition Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, will tell an important chapter in the history of Italian art and will reflect on the exhibition’s increasingly urgent confrontation with Mediterranean culture, both hybrid and prismatic, and simueltaneously representative of those populations that live by the sea and between land.

After his debut in the conceptual art, Enzo Cucchi (b. 1950 in Morro d'Alba) arrived at the figurative, becoming one of the main exponents of the historical core of the Transavanguardia. In his works on canvas, accompanied by numerous drawings and often presented by poetic texts written by himself, he reappropriates, with a visionary gaze, the myth and the history of art and literature. His works give life to compositions of great symbolic intensity, in which the world is represented as a battlefield between two opposing principles. After his great compositions with charcoal and collage, he began to experiment in the 1980s with the use of different materials, including earth, burnt wood, neon tubes, and iron.

Remo Salvadori (b. 1947 in Cerreto Guidi) conceives and realizes his works as a vehicle and the result of constant attention and interaction between the self and the reality that surrounds it. The artistic experience, lived as a revelation that matures inwardly and then manifests itself in the work, is the very essence of the relationship with the space and the encounter with others,  which is experienced "in understanding how to create.” In his works, the artist reflects on the symbolic character of geometric shapes and primary colors, investigating the chemical-alchemical and energetic properties of metals, in which he turns his attention to observe the objects that surround him.

Bartolomeo Pietromarchi is the curator of Classic Reloaded. Mediterranea and the Director of MAXXI Arte.