The Body Shape: la forma del corpo: From Giorgio de Chirico to Allen Jones, from Paul Delvaux to Louise Nevelson

In today's society with the fashion trends, the popularity of athletes and the outbreak of social media that expose our image constantly, more and more attention is given to the body, not only considered an aesthetic tool with which we present ourselves to the world, but also as the dwelling of the soul to be taken care of both mentally - from religions to Zen philosophies - and physically by focusing, for example, on sport and nutrition. The debate is ongoing: from the liberation of the body, especially the female body, to the challenge of society's prejudices which turns upside-down the standardized ideals of beauty considering everyone equally beautiful and worthy in their own diversity - we enter in the field of body positivity - up to the latest developments which, under the common denominator of body neutrality, encourage to rethink the body as a mere means of interaction with others and the world. In this highly topical issue the exhibition: The Body Shape: la forma del corpo. From Giorgio de Chirico to Allen Jones, from Paul Delvaux to Louise Nevelson seeks to reflect through art on the representations of the body that artists, according to their style or their poetics, model, distort, make statuary, dissect, transform or are ironic about.  

 

On display are 16 works including paintings and sculptures spanning the entire 20th Century: from an historical work by Pablo Picasso from 1904, to the more contemporary aspects of British Pop Art, represented by Allen Jones, who was recently included in a major show dedicated to the famous shoe designer Christian Louboutin. Among the highlights of the artworks included in the exhibition a work by Gino Severini from 1912 deserves particular attention: "La danse de l'ours", study for the homonymous painting in the permanent collection of the Center Pompidou, in which the cubist fragmentation of the body of the bear dancing with a ballerina is intensified by the futuristic reproduction of the feet's movement. Another fundamental staple of the Twentieth Century is De Chirico's metaphysical mannequin which, together with the theme of Gladiators - one of the most famous in his repertoire, developed by the Master in the wake of the film "Quo vadis?" of 1913 - stand as iconic points in the reflection on this topic, as well as the surreal women of Paul Delvaux which, in their petrification inspired by the Greek - Roman statuary, become the signature of his art, along with the Etruscan shapes of Massimo Campigli's figures. The museum-quality paintings are counterbalanced by a selection of sculptures. Just to name a few, among them are some works in plaster, terracotta and ceramics by Louise Nevelson - presented in Italy for the first time by Franco and Roberta Calarota in the exhibition curated by them at the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza in 1997 and rarely exhibited since then - as well as the meditative and minimal figure of a Seated Cardinal by Giacomo Manzù. Finally, we reach the contemporary distortions of humanoids by Mattia Moreni - whose general catalog by the great Enrico Crispolti was edited by Maggiore g.a.m.-, the cellular figures of Matta, or the imposing silhouettes of Sandro Chia. 

 

With this exhibition Maggiore g.a.m. puts in dialogue the art with one of the topics up to date, showing all of its contemporaneity. To ensure that the exhibition truly fits into the current debate, Maggiore g.a.m. has decided to present a public talk to be held in the month of September/October where personalities from the world of sport, fashion and nutrition are invited to participate. Because art, when it is such, also tells about the great life themes of people and immerses itself in their reality.