Live Music & Aperitivo at CIMA with Chiara Izzi
June 09, 2023, 6:30 PM
General admission: $30; Members: $20; Students: $15
RESERVE TICKETS HERE – THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT!
Join us at CIMA for the last edition of the ‘Special Event & Aperitivo‘ series (more to come in the fall). We will celebrate the closing of our current exhibition, From Depero to Rotella: Italian Commercial Posters Between Advertising and Art, with a live concert. Jazz singer, songwriter and composer Chiara Izzi will delight us with a special jazz medley of popular Italian music from the 1930s to the 1950s, the years of our poster exhibition.
Meet in the CIMA kitchen after the concert for cocktails and light bites!
Chiara Izzi is an award-winning jazz singer and composer from Italy based in New York City since 2014, three years after Quincy Jones awarded her first prize in the 2011 Montreux Jazz Festival Vocal Competition. In 2020 she also won one Independent Music Award for Best Jazz song with Vocals with her composition “Circles Of The Mind”. She perfectly blends traditional Italian music with jazz, Mediterreanean and pop sounds to create a dynamic and heartwarming show, singing and telling stories in four languages (Italian, English, Portuguese and Spanish). Her latest releases include Live In Bremen (Dot Time Records/2022) which embodies a classical richness enhanced by Izzi’s stylistic method of blending her lyrics and languages, and Across The Sea (Jando/2019), a cooperative project with pianist Kevin Hays. Chiara has performed in prominent New York venues such as Iridium, Birdland, The Blue Note, The Kennedy Center, Smalls, 55 Bar, sharing bandstands with such luminaries as Kevin Hays, Leon Parker, Diego Figueiredo, Jeff Hamilton, Aaron Goldberg, Bruce Barth, Eliot Zigmund, Warren Wolf, etc.
Cocktails courtesy of CAMPARI GROUP. Must be 21+. Please drink responsibly.
SYRMA: Theater & Aperitivo at CIMA
May 20, 2023, 2:30 PM
General admission: $30; Members: $20; Students: $15
Join us at CIMA for the second edition of the ‘Special Event & Aperitivo‘ series. This time we present a reading of the dystopian drama SYRMA, written by award winning actress and writer Carolina de’ Castiglioni (The Cumbersome Guest, Getting a Scholarship, FOUND).
Running time of the reading: 65 minutes
Meet us in the CIMA kitchen after the reading for an uplifting cocktail!
SYRMA was presented in 2019 at the Alchemical Theater by Union Square (NYC) and was selected as part of the New York Theater Festival. Since then, the play has been extensively developed into the final version the audience will be able to see on May 20th.
SYRMA SYNOPSIS. In the world of Syrma, free will does not exist. In its place are three all-powerful women, The Moire, who determine the life course of each individual. They control these lives with their magical strings, which can be spun (or severed) at whim. But when a mysterious golden string is created, its human counterpart gains a unique ability to choose her own path. Syrma explores the burden of free will and the cost of following one’s dreams.
The cast includes Carolina in the lead role, Sofía Figueroa (Wounded, Encanto Immersive Show), Agathe Westad (Phèdre/Phaedra), Christina Goursky (Beauty Queen), Emerson Reed (Peter/Wendy, Pride and Prejudice), Seeni Chandran (A Few Good Men) and Bella Kouds (Our Song, Hamlet). The reading is directed by Lizzy Fruehling (Constellations, Mere Exposure).
Carolina de’ Castiglioni is an award winning Italian actress. An NYU Tisch Alumna, she received several Best Actress awards for her works. She has performed at The Cell Theater, The Cabaret Theater, Teatro Litta in Milan amongst others. Her work has been praised by BroadwayWorld, ELLE, Vanity Fair, Corriere della Sera, La Stampa, La Repubblica, amongst others. She lives between New York and Milan. www.carolinadecastiglioni.com
Lizzy Fruehling is a Brooklyn-based director and writer. She studied theater at NYU Tisch’s Meisner Studio and film at Stonestreet Studios. Recent projects include Mere Exposure at The Brick Theater (writer, dir.), Constellations at Playwrights Downtown (dir.), and Earth and Sky at NYU Tisch (assistant dir.). www.lizzyfruehling.com
Cocktails courtesy of CAMPARI GROUP. Light refreshments will accompany the cocktail.
Must be 21+. Please drink responsibly.
‘On Salvo/De Salvo’: Presenting a New Monograph
May 18, 2023, 6:00 PM
General admission: $10; Members & Students: Free
Join us at CIMA as we present IO SONO SALVO: Works and Writings 1961-2015 (NERO Editions, 2023), a new monograph dedicated to artist Salvo (1947-2015). The monograph is conceived as a self-portrait: a story of the artist’s practice through his works and words. A collection of writings, including the treatise On Painting, unpublished texts, and various interviews given over the years, complement a vast selection of his works, presented in chronological sequence.
Bob Nickas, author of one of the two critical essays published in the volume, will be in conversation with CIMA Fellow Giorgio Di Domenico, with the participation of CIMA Executive Director, Nicola Lucchi.
Born in Leonforte, in Sicily, Salvo moves to Turin in 1956, where he starts carrying out a conceptual research, first akin to that of Arte Povera and of artists such as Sol LeWitt, Robert Barry and Joseph Kosuth, with whom he comes into contact. 1973 was the year of his “return to painting”, a language he had practiced in the very first years of his training and that, at the beginning of the 1970s, was to be considered unconventional.
Salvo does not conceive painting in contrast to the language of conceptual art, and through a fifty-year career, he is able to carry on a personal research, in constant dialogue with the past.
Light refreshments will be served
This project is supported by the Italian Council (10th edition, 2021), a program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
Bob Nickas is a writer and curator based in New York. He has organized over 120 exhibitions since 1984. As Curatorial Advisor at MoMA/PS1, between 2004-07, he mounted monographic exhibitions for Lee Lozano, Stephen Shore, and Wolfgang Tillmans, as well as projects with Trisha Donnelly and Torbjørn Rødland. He served on the teams for the 2003 Biennale de Lyon and Greater New York 2005 at MoMA/PS1, contributed a section to Aperto at the 1993 Venice Biennale, and collaborated with Cady Noland on her Documenta IX project in 1992. He was founding editor of Index magazine. His books include Painting Abstraction: New Elements In Abstract Painting, and four collections of writing and interviews: Theft Is Vision, Live Free or Die, The Dept. of Corrections, and Komplaint Dept. He is one of the authors of Defining Contemporary Art: 25 Years In 200 Pivotal Artworks, No Problem: Cologne/New York 1984-1989, and Brand New: Art & Commodity in the 1980s. Most recently he has published essays in books on Vija Celmins, Robert Grosvenor, Steven Parrino, Josh Smith and Salvo.
Italian Posters Study Day
May 05, 2023, 10:00 AM - 06:30 PM
General admission: $15. Members and Students: Free
Keynote speaker: Prof. Luca Cottini (Villanova University)
The exhibition From Depero to Rotella: Italian Commercial Posters Between Advertising and Art, curated by Nicola Lucchi and on view in New York at the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) through June 10, 2023, examines the cross-pollination between avant-garde art and commercial posters in Italy, with a particular focus on the interwar years and the early post-World War II era, during the country’s economic boom.
With this Italian Posters Study Day, CIMA’s Research Fellows join prominent scholars from diverse fields—including History of Art and Architecture, Graphic Design and Italian Studies—to investigate the themes at the center of the exhibition within and outside of established critical frameworks.
The conference will take place in person at the Center for Italian Modern Art. Besides the keynote address and three scholarly panels, a group of scholars, designers and design historians will also gather for a special roundtable session to discuss the art of Italian posters and their relations to the different art movements of the interwar and postwar years, the corresponding social milieux, as well as the connection to disciplines ranging from art and architecture to graphic design and fashion.
Conference Program
10AM: Coffee and registration
Light breakfast will be served
Conference registration and viewing of the exhibition From Depero to Rotella: Italian Commercial Posters Between Advertising and Art, curated by Nicola Lucchi.
10:30AM: Panel 1 – FORM
Duccio Nobili (Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, IT): “Some Shades of Red: Albe Steiner and the Legacy of Constructivism”
Giorgio Di Domenico (CIMA Research Fellow): “Dream Objects: Surrealism and Italian Advertising Art”
Jonathan Wajskol (Parsons School of Design): “A G Fronzoni: a Minimalist and a Noncommercial Designer”
Followed by discussion and Q&A
12:00-1:30PM: Panel 2 — DEBATES
Greg D’Onofrio (Cooper Union; School of Visual Arts): “The Evolution of Italian Poster Design: 1960-1975”
Michele Galluzzo (University of Bolzano, IT): “What Surrounds These Posters? Mimmo Rotella’s Décollages and the Italian Advertising Landscape Between the 1960s and 1970s”
Margaret Scarborough (Columbia University): “Oil and Intellectuals: Pasolini Against Advertising”
Followed by discussion and Q&A
1:30- 3:00PM: Lunch Break
Light lunch will be served
3:00-4:30PM: Panel 3: FUNCTION
Marcella Martin (CIMA Research Fellow): “The Fashion of Advertising: Reference and the Limits of Repetition”
Virginia Spadaccini (University of Chieti, IT): “The Roman Factor: Notes on Fashion Illustration and Advertising 1955-60″
Wanda Strauven (Columbia University): “Between Posters and Screens, Advertising and Building-Wrapping”
Followed by discussion and Q&A
4:30-5:30pm: Roundtable discussion
Moderator: Angelina Lippert (Poster House)
Discussants: Gwenda-lin Grewal (New School of Social Research), Andrea Trabucco-Campos (Graphic and Type Designer, Creative Director at Gretel), Emiliano Ponzi (Visual Artist and Illustrator)
5:30PM Keynote address
Luca Cottini (Villanova University): “The Birth of National Industry and the Crisis of Advertising. The Italian 1930s Through the Eyes of Marcello Dudovich”
Followed by Q&A
The Italian Posters Study Day at CIMA is made possible with the generous support of Swann Auction Galleries.
Only Mozart is Missing (Manca Solo Mozart): a theater performance at CIMA
May 03, 2023, 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
General admission: Free
This event is part of
In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY 2023
ONLY MOZART IS MISSING
(Manca solo Mozart)
Based on a true story by Marco Simeoli’s grandfather
Written & Directed by Antonio Grosso
Performed by Marco Simeoli
Set Design by Alessandro Chiti
Costume Design by Marco Maria Della Vecchia
Assistant Director: Andrea Vellotti
Photographer: Francesco Nannarelli
Presented by Altra Scena and Viola Produzioni
Marco Simeoli brings to the stage, with words and music, the many stories from his grandfather, founder of the most important, and still open, music store in Naples: Musica Simeoli. Memories of the Belle Époque, the Second World War, the economic boom of the Sixties and the great illusion of the Eighties come alive together with the many famous clients of Musica Simeoli, such as Totò, Roberto Murolo, Renato Carosone, Riccardo Muti, Pino Daniele and Massimo Troisi.
Running Time: 75 min.
In ITALIAN, NEAPOLITAN with ENGLISH Supertitles
Light refreshments will be served
About In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY
In 2013 Kairos Italy Theater, the preeminent Italian theater company in New York City, together with the Italian KIT Italia, created In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, the first Italian theater festival to take place in all five New York City boroughs and beyond. The festival’s first edition was part of the 2013 Year of Italian Culture in the United States and it was supported by the Embassy of Italy in DC and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU that, soon after, became one of the organizers. The festival has since become an annual event. www.inscenany.com
RESERVE YOUR FREE TICKETS HERE!
‘Exhibiting Italian Art in the United States from Futurism to Arte Povera: a book talk by author Raffaele Bedarida
May 01, 2023, 6:00 PM
General admission: $15. Members and Students: Free
Meet author Raffaele Bedarida as he presents his latest book Exhibiting Italian Art in the United States from Futurism to Arte Povera (Routledge, 2022).
Raffaele Bedarida and his book will be introduced by Emily Braun, Distinguished Professor, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Bedarida demonstrates how Italian institutions, dealers, critics, and artists constructed a modern national identity for Italy by exporting – literally and figuratively – contemporary art to the United States in key moments between 1929 and 1969. From artist Fortunato Depero opening his Futurist House in New York City to critic Germano Celant launching Arte Povera in the United States, Raffaele Bedarida examines the thick web of individuals and cultural environments beyond the two more canonical movements that shaped this project. By interrogating standard narratives of Italian Fascist propaganda on the one hand and American Cold War imperialism on the other, his book establishes a more nuanced transnational approach. The central thesis is that, beyond the immediate aims of political propaganda and conquering a new market for Italian art, these art exhibitions, publications, and the critical discourse aimed at American audiences all reflected back on their makers: they forced and helped Italians define their own modernity in relation to the world’s new dominant cultural and economic power.
Light refreshments will be served.
Raffaele Bedarida, associate professor or Art History at Cooper Union, is an art historian and curator specializing in transnational modernism and politics. Since he joined The Cooper Union full-time faculty in 2016, he has coordinated the History and Theory of Art program. Bedarida holds a Ph.D. from the Art History Department of the CUNY Graduate Center, New York as well as M.A. and B.A. degrees in Art History from the Università degli Studi di Siena, Italy. His research has focused on cultural diplomacy, migration, and exchange between Italy and the United States. He has also worked on exhibition history, censorship, and propaganda under Fascism and during the Cold War, from Futurism to Arte Povera. Since 2008, when he founded and curated the residency program Harlem Studio Fellowship in New York, Bedarida has actively promoted programs of international exchange for emerging artists. In addition to his academic and curatorial activities, Bedarida has regularly lectured on modern and contemporary art topics at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and MoMA. Bedarida has authored three monographs: Bepi Romagnoni: Il Nuovo Racconto (Milan: Silvana, 2005); Corrado Cagli: la pittura, l’esilio, l’America (Rome: Donzelli, 2018; English edition: CPL Editions, in press); Exhibiting Italian Art in the US. Futurism to Arte Povera (London-New York: Routledge, 2022). He has also edited many volumes, among which: Methodologies of Exchange: Twentieth Century Italian Art at MoMA, 1949, with Davide Colombo and Silvia Bignami, special issue of Italian Modern Art, January 2020; Gianfranco Baruchello: Painters Ain’t Butterflies (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2021); Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today, with Sharon Hecker (London-New York: Bloomsbury, 2022). His academic articles and essays have been published extensively in periodicals, such as Oxford Art Journal, International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, Italian Modern Art, and Artforum, and in exhibition catalogues. Bedarida’s upcoming publications is: Author, Corrado Cagli: Exile, Painting, America 1938-1947, monograph (New York: Primo Levi Center Editions, in press).
Guided Tour & Aperitivo at CIMA
April 29, 2023, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Admission: $20
Come for the art, stay for a drink: it all happens at CIMA!
Join us for the first of a series of guided tours and cocktail hours: enjoy a guided tour of our current exhibition From Depero to Rotella: Italian commercial posters between advertising and art, led by our research Fellows; then stop by our stylish kitchen for a cocktail. Aperol Spritz anyone?
It’s the perfect combination of art, fun and good spirits. Ti aspettiamo!
Cocktails courtesy of CAMPARI GROUP. Light refreshments will accompany the cocktail.
Must be 21+. Please drink responsibly.
‘From Depero to Rotella’: an exclusive guided tour with Paul Shaw
April 28, 2023, 6:00 PM
General admission: $15. Members and Students: Free
Explore CIMA’s current exhibition From Depero to Rotella: Italian commercial posters between advertising and art through the lens of typographic design. Paul Shaw, noted calligrapher and design historian with an expertise in modernist typography, will take us on a visual survey of the posters in the show, to analyze the inventiveness and quality of their typographic solutions and contextualize them within the European modernist milieu of the ’20s through the ’60s.
Paul Shaw, an award-winning graphic designer, typographer, calligrapher and design historian in New York City, teaches at Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts. The designer or codesigner of eighteen typefaces, he is the coauthor of Blackletter: Type and National Identity (Princeton Architectural Press, 1998) and the author of Helvetica and the New York City Subway System (MIT Press). He writes about letter design in the blog Blue Pencil.
Multipli Forti: Italian literary fiction festival (2nd edition)
April 26, 2023, 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
General admission: Free
RESERVE YOUR FREE TICKETS HERE!
CIMA is proud to host the morning of the second day of the second annual Italian Literary Fiction Festival.
The Italian Cultural Institute in New York
in collaboration with
Italian General Consulate in Boston — FUIS (Italian Unitary Writers’ Federation) — THE BRIDGE Award – (CIMA) The Center for Italian Modern Art) — NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò – RIZZOLI Bookstore – – Boston Public Library – I AM Books
presents
MULTIPLI FORTI
Voices from Contemporary Italian Literature
ITALIAN LITERARY FICTION FESTIVAL – II EDITION
NEW YORK CITY
25 – 26 – 27 April, 2023
ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE – CIMA – CASA ITALIANA ZERILLI MARIMO’ NYU – RIZZOLI Bookstore
BOSTON
28 – 29 April, 2023
ITALIAN GENERAL CONSULATE – BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY – I AM books
An initiative aimed at the public of readers and the international publishing world (publishing houses, literary agencies, editors and translators) promoted by the Italian Cultural Institute of New York directed by Fabio Finotti with the collaboration of FUIS (Italian Unitary Writers’ Federation), with the artistic direction of Maria Ida Gaeta supported by a leading group of scholars and experts (Alessandro Giammei, Chiara Benetollo, Monica Calabritto, Luca Briasco, Eugenio Refini). The first edition was held in June 2022 and was born with the hope that it could become an annual appointment to build a literary bridge between Italy and the United States, beyond any cultural stereotype. The second edition strengthens this event and will take place both in New York City and in Boston thanks to the collaboration with the Italian General Consulate.
Multipli Forti is a transatlantic window on major literary trends of Italian fiction, told by the authors who are writing it. We asked them to think about six major themes that shape today’s literature in their language. Each event of Multipli Forti will revolve around their response to these themes, which take the form of short stories, literary memoirs and meditations, swift brief essays and, in some cases, even personal confessions. The first theme is that of individual and collective destinies, along the line that connects Dante to contemporary attempts to write in the first person—while writing about the whole world. The second theme is “Italianness” itself, and how what we call “Italian Literature” is, in fact, informed by foreign, alien, and estranging, vital influences. The hand-to-hand combat with reality is the third theme: political engagement, from the Renaissance concept of inchiesta to the current hybridizations of fiction and reportage. The fourth theme is myth, as either a fellow or an enemy to history. As reservoirs of images, history and myth blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality: they are a common language that builds communities. The fifth theme is bodies, and we associate it with the issue of power. We invited authors to think about authority, and about how authority disciplines our bodies in relation to political, literary, and psychological institutions. The last theme, Genius loci, is the theme of places, of vernacular and dialectal traditions in a land of proudly different territories, the theme of the thin line that separates the familiar from the unknown.
Click here for the complete program of events
PROGRAM at CIMA on Wednesday, APRIL 26
Breakfast
10:30 a.m.
Readings from Alba De Cespedes y Bertini’s Quaderno proibito
read by Ann Goldstein from her own translation
10:45 a.m.
Fumettibrutti and Giorgio Vasta with Ramak Fazel
RESPONDENT: Tiziana Lo Porto
MODERATOR : Chiara Benetollo
in ENGLISH
Light lunch will be served
General admission: Free
RESERVE YOUR FREE TICKETS HERE!
Baroquemania: a book talk by author Laura Moure Cecchini
April 12, 2023, 6:00 PM
General admission: $15. Members and Students: Free
Join us at CIMA for a book talk with author Laura Moure Cecchini presenting her latest book Baroquemania: Italian visual culture and the construction of national identity, 1898–1945 (Manchester University Press, 2022).
The author will be in conversation with Prof. Karen Raizen, Bard College, and with Giorgio Di Domenico, CIMA Research Fellow.
Laura’s book studies the cultural politics of the Baroque in Italian modernism. This book radically reconceptualises Italian post-unification visual culture by exploring an element that has, until now, been systematically ignored: its fraught entanglement with the Baroque.
Evoking a glorious past – the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance – played a key role in constructing a common Italian identity following the country’s unification in 1861. But the Baroque was considered too extravagant, kitsch, and whimsical to serve the aggressive nation-building impulse that led to Fascism. Baroquemania sets out to redress this narrative. It interrogates a diverse range of media, from paintings, sculptures, and buildings to commercial illustrations, postcards, posters, pageants, photographs, films, and exhibitions. Situating Italy within European and Latin American reimaginings of the Baroque, the book proves how widespread use (and misuse) of the style was integral to articulating Italians’ ambivalent relationships with modernity and tradition.
Unravelling the Baroque’s protean afterlife in the work and writings of Umberto Boccioni, Giorgio de Chirico, Armando Brasini, Adolfo Wildt, and Lucio Fontana, among others, this book reveals the Baroque’s role in pioneering a distinctively Italian approach to modern art, one that was neither anti-modernist nor fully committed to avant-garde values. By examining how the Baroque haunted Italian visual culture, Baroquemania offers a fresh look at an essential aspect of Italy’s development into a modern nation.
Light Refreshments will be served.
Laura Moure Cecchini is Assistant Professor (Ricercatore di tipo B) in the Department of Cultural Heritage at the Università di Padova (Padua, Italy). She was a recipient of the Lauro de Bosis Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University and Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Colgate University. Her research focuses on the transnational legacies of fascist visual and material culture. She is now at work on two projects, one analyzing artistic exchanges between Italy and Argentina in the context of transatlantic fascist diplomacy, and the other on the material ‘debris’ of Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. Her work has appeared in The Art Bulletin, Selva, Third Text, Modernism/modernity, and Oxford Art Journal. Laura’s research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, CIMA- Center for Italian Modern Art, The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, and the Cesare Barbieri Fund at Trinity College, among other institutions.