MEMBERS ONLY: Private tour of “Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting”
December 02, 2015
Join us for an exclusive private visit to the Guggenheim Museum outside of regular hours to see “Alberto Burri: The Trauma of Painting” with the exhibition curator Emily Braun, Distinguished Professor of Art History at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, and a member of CIMA’s advisory committee.
The exhibition, the first major retrospective in the United States in over 35 years, showcases the work of pioneering Italian artist Alberto Burri (1915-95) on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. It is the most comprehensive show of his work ever mounted, featuring the Sacchi (sacks) for which Burri is best known as well as other less familiar series, such as Catrami (tars), Muffe (molds), Gobbi (hunchbacks), Bianchi(whites), Legni (woods), Ferri (irons), Combustioni plastiche (plastic combustions), Cretti, and Cellotex works. Learn more about the artist at the Guggenheim’s special exhibition website.
RSVP is now full. To be added to the event’s waitlist, please write to info at italianmodernart.org
THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY WEEKEND OPEN HOUSE
November 28, 2015
CIMA invites you to a free Open House on Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. The Giorgio Morandi exhibition will be open for viewing from 12 noon to 4pm, and CIMA’s fellows in residence will be on hand.
Artist Talk: Joel Meyerowitz on Morandi’s Objects
November 18, 2015
CIMA is pleased to welcome celebrated American photographer Joel Meyerowitz to discuss his recent project, Morandi’s Objects. Working in Morandi’s Bologna studio, Meyerowitz created portraits of 270 objects used by the artist as inspiration for his still-life paintings. A selection of these photographs, along with one of the objects from Morandi’s studio, are on view at CIMA.
Thanks to the support of the Istituzione Bologna Musei | Museo Morandi, Meyerowitz was granted access to the rooms in Casa Morandi, where the painter’s objects still remain. Taking over 700 photographs, Meyerowitz completed a profoundly taxonometric survey of 270 dust-covered objects in the small room where Morandi worked: vases, shells, bottles of all sizes, painted over, filled with raw pigments, colored bottles or plain, silk flowers, jugs, boxes, tin cans, funnels, and more. Meyerowitz treated his photographs as portraits, turning each object slowly until one facet spoke more clearly than any other and revealed the secret identity that Morandi valued each object for.
Meyerowitz worked at Morandi’s table, where the light still falls, as it always has, on the circles and lines the painter drew to mark the positions of his objects. The background remains as Morandi left it, a pale, rosy golden paper that is brittle and ready to crumble at the slightest touch. His presence is in the room. As the essayist Maggie Barrett affirms, “entering the studio of such an important artist means exploring his soul in depth; a place inviting the visitor to translate these objects into a meaningful portrait of the artist.”
Copies of his new book, Morandi’s Objects (Damiani Editore, 2015), will be available for purchase.
Joel Meyerowitz (born March 6, 1938) is a street photographer and portrait and landscape photographer. He began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of color photography as serious art. In 1962, inspired by seeing Robert Frank at work, Meyerowitz quit his job as an art director at an advertising agency and took to the streets of New York City with a 35mm camera and color film. The fleeting moments of street life in New York City and other American cities that Meyerowitz has captured are some of the earliest and best-known examples of color street photography. Many of his photographs are icons of modern photography, and made Meyerowitz, along with William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, one of the most influential modern photographers and representatives of the “New Color Photography” of the 1960s and 70s. His work, which has appeared in over 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the world, is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, and many other museums worldwide. Joel Meyerowitz is represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York.
$10; free for CIMA members and students with ID
THIS EVENT IS NOW FULL!
Drawing Night at CIMA
November 16, 2015
CIMA is excited to hold its first ever Drawing Night, in collaboration with the New York Studio School, opening CIMA’s unique and intimate setting to students and artists and encouraging them to interact with, analyze, and draw inspiration from Giorgio Morandi’s works. Painter Graham Nickson, Dean of the NYSS and originator of that institution’s famed Drawing Marathon, will open the program with reflections on drawing, close study, and Morandi. Materials will be provided by the legendary Italian papermaker Fabriano, maker of the artist paper that Morandi himself used. Currently celebrating the 750th anniversary of papermaking in Fabriano Italy, the company has also donated graphite pencils from the traditional Austrian manufacturer Cretacolor. Limited to 30 participants.
Proposed Schedule:
6pm Registration
6:10 Remarks by Graham Nickson
6:30-7:30 Drawing Time
7:30 Discussion
7:50/8pm Conclusion of Program
Janet Abramowicz in conversation with Emily Braun
November 07, 2015
Artist Janet Abramowicz, author of Giorgio Morandi: The Art of Silence (Yale UP, 2005), studied under Giorgio Morandi at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna and subsequently became his teaching assistant. She will discuss her recollections of the artist and thoughts on the work at CIMA with Emily Braun, Distinguished Professor of Art History at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY.
MEMBERS ONLY: Private view of “Painting in Italy, 1910s to 1950s”
November 03, 2015
Join us for an aperitivo and special private viewing of the exhibition “Painting in Italy, 1910s to 1950s” at the Sperone Westwater Gallery. We will be hosted by Gian Enzo Sperone, who curated the exhibition, and Angela Westwater. Antonella Pellizzari, Professor of 19th- and 20th-Century History of Photography at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and author of the catalogue essay accompanying this exhibition, will offer some remarks.
Featuring works by Giacomo Balla, Annibale Biglione, Nino di Salvatore, Alberto Magnelli, Bruno Munari, Enrico Prampolini, Ettore Sottsass and a host of others, the exhibition pays homage to a variety of painters working before, during and after World War II.
When Hollywood Fell In Love with Modern Italian Art
October 22, 2015
A conversation with Raffaele Bedarida, CIMA 2013-14 Fellow, PhD candidate at The Graduate Center, CUNY
As Italy moved from the decade of Reconstruction (1945-1955) to the Economic Miracle (1958-1963), an image of a “new Italy” emerged in the United States. Gone was the redemptive rhetoric of a destroyed and impoverished country resurfacing from the war’s rubble; what prevailed now was a modern, glamorous, and pleasing facade. Modern Italian art played a key role in reshaping Americans’ perception of Italy, and during the second half of the 1950s it enjoyed unprecedented success in this country. Nearly a dozen exhibitions of contemporary art from Italy toured the country during these years. Beyond the art world, Italian artists such as Marino Marini, Massimo Campigli, Alberto Burri, and Afro Basaldella conquered Hollywood and the fashion world, and they seduced millions of Americans through mainstream TV programs, movies, and illustrated magazines.
Join us for an evening with former CIMA Fellow Raffaele Bedarida for an exploration of the emergence of a taste for modern Italian art in late 1950s America.
OPEN HOUSE NEW YORK
October 17, 2015
CIMA is proud to participate for the first time in Open House New York. Enjoy free entry all day 10am – 6pm.
Since 2003, for two days each October, the Annual Open House New York Weekend unlocks the doors of New York’s most important buildings, offering an extraordinary opportunity to experience the city and meet the people who design, build, and preserve New York.
Irina Verona, the architect who renovated CIMA’s beautiful loft space, will be on hand to lead OpenDialogue tours at 11 am and 1 pm.
CIMA’s Fall Fellows, Lucia Piccioni and Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, will lead guided visits of the Giorgio Morandi installation at 3 pm and 4.30 pm.
GIORGIO MORANDI OPENING WEEKEND
October 08 - 09, 2015
9 October / 10 OCTOBER 2015
Join us on October 9 and 10 for the opening weekend of CIMA’s third season, dedicated to Giorgio Morandi! This spectacular installation features more than 40 paintings, etchings, and drawings drawn from public and private collections. Many of the works have not been seen in the United States in nearly fifty years.
Guided visits, led by CIMA’s fellows, will be held on Friday and Saturday at 11am, 1pm, 3pm, and 5pm every weekend starting October 9 Until June 25, 2016.
Admission $10; free for CIMA Members and students
BOOK YOUR VISIT HERE! OR BECOME A MEMBER TO ATTEND THE VIP PREVIEW!
CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN DESIGNERS IN NEW YORK
September 17, 2015
Three young Italian designers, who have recently relocated to New York, will present their work and illustrate their creative process and methodology. A Q&A moderated by Allan Chochinov, Chair of the Products of Design MFA at School of Visual Arts, New York, will shed light on the professional aspects that have changed over the past ten years and on the way in which the Italian cultural heritage and identity of the presenters impacted their work.