WAR IS OVER

GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea and the Assessorato alla Cultura del Comune di Bergamo present the exhibition WAR IS OVER 1945 – 2005 la Libertà dell’arte da Picasso a Warhol a Cattelan (WAR IS OVER 1945 – 2005. The Freedom of Art from Picasso to Warhol and Cattelan) from 15 October 2005 to 26 February 2006. In the sixtieth year since the Liberation, the exhibition celebrates the freedom won in Europe at the end of World War II by presenting one hundred works of art by international artists who, in the twentieth century, made themselves the spokesmen of the different themes linked to freedom, tackled issues raised by the war, and analysed the consequent developments in politics, society and culture that are still in progress in Europe today.

In each of the rooms of the exhibition, the curators, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and M. Cristina Rodeschini Galati, have placed modern and contemporary works side-by-side to underline how the contribution made by art to the understanding of social phenomena is not limited to a certain period but continues to the present day. The various combinations of works have been suggested by affinities between different artistic languages, the capacity to reflect elements of crisis in a particular period, and the intention to establish new values.

The layout of the artworks is divided into eleven themed sections that provide a logical structure to the overall theme: Peoples of the World Unite; Degenerate-Generate (two watercolours painted by Hitler will be on show as historical documents, through artists whose works were considered ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis); Hostages; Attention!; The Trench of Existence; We Are The Revolution (one of the works exhibited is the poster War Is Over – if you want it, which Yoko Ono and John Lennon made in 1969); Protest; In the Name of the Father; Il Bel Paese; The Obsession of History (video by contemporary international artists). The exhibition ends with a separate section called The Horizon of the Future housed in the Palazzo della Ragione in Bergamo’s Città Alta (Upper City) which will open on 25 October 2005.

A room in the exhibition shows a video in which an anthology of historical and contemporary clips of current affairs is projected. The video was produced especially for the exhibition in collaboration with La Storia siamo noi, the Raieducational programme that made its film archive available.

The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue published by Silvana Editoriale with essays on a historical and critical nature written by the curators Giacinto Di Pietrantonio and M. Cristina Rodeschini Galati. Each section, which corresponds to those of the exhibition, is introduced by an essay by experts in different disciplines: Peoples of the World Unite by Franco Farinelli (geographer); Degenerate-Generate by Giorgio Galli (historian); Hostages by Ugo Morelli (psychologist); Attention! by Carlo Jean (army general, teacher at LUISS); The Trench of Existence by Eugenio Borgna (psychiatrist); We Are The Revolution by Enzo Rutigliano (sociologist); Protest by Tommaso Pincio (writer); In the Name of the Father by Mauro Ceruti and Giuseppe Fornari (philosophers); Il Bel Paese by Roberto Di Caro (journalist); The Obsession of History by Brunella Antomarini (philosopher); Horizon of the Futur e by Achille Bonito Oliva (critic and art historian).

A feature of the exhibition WAR IS OVER 1945 – 2005. The Freedom of Art from Picasso to Warhol and Cattelan is the project War Is Over: 12 freedom posters in which a number of international artists represented in the exhibition have been invited to design a poster on the themes of war and freedom to be posted on a monthly basis throughout Bergamo. The project began in January 2005 and will run until December (Fabio Mauri, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Vedovamazzei, Enzo Cucchi, Paola Pivi and Sislej Xhafa, Vanessa Beecroft, Gilberto Zorio, Costa Vece, Jan Fabre). In concomitance with the opening it’ll be shown the poster War Is Over – if you want it by Yoko Ono and John Lennon.

The opening of the exhibition will be accompanied by a series of films (in collaboration with Lab 80) and multi-disciplinary conferences on the themes of war and freedom.

The exhibition is supported by the contribution of the Gruppo ASM as main sponsor, by the Provincia di Bergamo, with particular focus on the educational aspects, and it is mounted with the participation of Cobe Direzionale S.p.A.

Pressetext

WAR IS OVER 1945 - 2005 la Libertà dell’arte da Picasso a Warhol a Cattelan
Kuratoren: Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, M. Cristina Rodeschini Galati

Werke von Francis Alÿs, Francis Bacon, Enrico Baj, Giacomo Balla, Max Beckmann, Vanessa Beecroft, Joseph Beuys, Alighiero e Boetti, Christian Boltanski, Alberto Burri, Mircea Cantor, Carlo Carrà, Maurizio Cattelan, Enzo Cucchi, Stephen Dean, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Giorgio De Chirico, Jeremy Deller, Otto Dix, Sam Durant, Jan Fabre, Luciano Fabro, Jean Fautrier, Lyonel Feininger, Lucio Fontana, Meschac Gaba, Carlos Garaicoa, Kendell Geers, Alberto Giacometti, Leon Golub, George Grosz, Renato Guttuso, David Hammons, John Heartfield, Jörg Immendorff, Irwin , Alexej von Jawlensky, Jasper Johns, Wassily Kandinsky, Anselm Kiefer, Paul Klee, Paul Kleinschmidt, Markus Lüpertz, Mario Merz, Zoran Music, Shirin Neshat, Yoko Ono & John Lennon, Adrian Paci, Giulio Paolini, Mimmo Paladino, Philippe Parreno, Yan Peiming, Pablo Picasso, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Paola Pivi, Gerhard Richter, Salvo , Markus Schinwald, Andres Serrano, Gino Severini, Santiago Sierra, Mario Sironi, Luc Tuymans, Piotr Uklanski, Costa Vece, Emilio Vedova, Andy Warhol, Sislej Xhafa, Artur Zmijewski, Gilberto Zorio,, u.a.