Paris | Davide Benati. Antonio Tabucchi. Terraces: ART / LITERATURE

22 July - 29 September 2024
Paris | Davide Benati. Antonio Tabucchi. Terraces, ART / LITERATURE

The interdisciplinary exhibition Davide Benati / Antonio Tabucchi. Terrasses explores the profound connections between art/literature through the friendship and artistic collaboration between two eminent figures of contemporary culture: Davide Benati and Antonio Tabucchi. One of the most important Italian contemporary writer, nominated for the Nobel, and the contemporary artist presented two times at the Venice Biennale - the first time in 1982 and the second one with a solo show at the Italian Pavillon in 1990 - created an opera omnia. The stories by Antonio Tabucchi, created simultaneously with the works of Davide Benati, form a coherent and inseparable whole. In a way, they represent a four-handed creation where words and images converse and complement each other. Although the stories are written solely by Tabucchi and the paintings are made solely by Benati, the exhibition allows visitors to delve into their artistic collaboration. This joint exploration reveals the subtle and profound links between Tabucchi's poetic writing and Benati's visual compositions. Among the works on display, there are twelve pieces, blending watercolors and oils, showcasing the diversity and richness of this collaboration.

Davide Benati was born in Reggio Emilia in 1949, but his artistic career began in Milan in the early 1970s. While the general climate was characterized by conceptual research and outcomes, Benati rediscovered the values of painting: in most cases, he uses the watercolor technique because, as he explains, "in the transparency of watercolor, I find a sort of existential consciousness. Through its clarity, I seek the light, not necessarily a physical fact, but rather a spiritual one."
A pivotal moment in the development of his poetics was a trip to Nepal in 1977: it was in these lands that the artist came into contact with Eastern culture, gradually becoming fascinated especially by the Chinese and Japanese worlds. The rediscovery of ancient civilizations enters his works along with references to literature and philosophy. In 1982, he participated in the Venice Biennale for the first time, and after initial experiments, it was precisely in this period that his language took definitive shape: light brushstrokes spread across thin sheets of paper, revealing its texture. During the 1980s, his works predominantly focused on floral motifs, represented by long stems delicately laid on the support or by large flowers occupying the entire surface: in any case, what stands out is the delicacy of the figures, which perfectly dialogue with the imperfections of the paper support.
In 1990, he participated again in the Venice Biennale, this time occupying a personal space. From this period comes the series "Gifts of the Low Tide", which in some way connects to his previous research: the flowers that often populate his production are indeed visible, but from this moment they take on the appearance of luminous nuclei, sources from which intense energetic forces emanate, which, thanks to the qualities of watercolor, still retain an aura of softness. The strong friendship with writer Antonio Tabucchi, and a trip they took together to northern Portugal, led him to conceive the "Terraces" cycle in the mid-1990s. In Braga, the revelation of a magnificent wooden terrace with an ancient, twisted wisteria provided the inspiration for this cycle, in which energetic and substantial brushstrokes reproduce the twisted branches of the wisteria, in an elegant interplay with the empty spaces left on the sheet or, in other cases, with bundles of bright and vivid colors. This was followed by the "Secrets" series, in which mysterious portals open towards darkness.
The new millennium opened with the cycle titled "Snow in the Evening". Here the artist creates almost monochromatic surfaces, punctuated by evanescent and rarefied material presences: it almost seems like witnessing accounts of distant journeys the painter undertakes to make us experience new landscapes, sometimes candid and frozen, other times torrid and dark.
Meanwhile, his painting has conquered some of the most important cities in the world, such as Paris, Zurich, and New York.
 

Antonio Tabucchi - (Pisa 1943 - Lisbon 2012), is one of the greatest contemporary Italian writers, known for his fiction and essays. He is the author of over twenty books translated worldwide, among which his most famous works include Indian Nocturne (1984), Pereira Maintains (1994), and The Edge of the Horizon (1986), all three adapted into films by Alain Corneau, Roberto Faenza, and Fernando Lopes, respectively. His refined prose fuses existential, political, and historical themes, exploring multiple identities and the sense of time. Besides his literary talent, Tabucchi taught Portuguese literature at the University of Siena while translating many works of Fernando Pessoa into Italian. He was also a guest professor at Bard College in New York and at the Collège de France. Passionate about Portugal, he lived in Lisbon for a long time, actively contributing to the promotion of Lusitanian culture. He collaborated with prestigious newspapers such as Le Monde, Corriere della Sera, and El País, and published numerous texts in La Nouvelle Revue française. Awarded many international literary prizes, Antonio Tabucchi leaves behind an invaluable literary legacy, rich in reflection and emotion.

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