Pino Pascali: Between Arte Povera and the Mediterranean

Valérie Da Costa, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art History, University of Strasbourg and member of the Scientific Committee of the Foundation Pino Pascali, addresses the concept of “the Mediterranean” in the practice of Italian artist Pino Pascali. Pascali’s work across a range of materials—including water, mud, fake fur, and steel wool—led to a reconceptualization of sculpture as a medium, as well as the exhibition as a space. Focused on the artist’s sculptural turn to the Mediterranean in 1967 and 1968, this lecture offers a re-reading of Pino Pascali’s work based on anthropology and critical texts of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ernesto de Martino, and Pier Paolo Pasolini within the historical context of the beginning of Arte Povera. Da Costa’s research focuses on Italian art in the second half of the twentieth century.

This video is the result of the conference Pino Pascali: Between Arte Povera and the Mediterranean streamed on Instagram by Magazzino Italian Art, New York, as a part of the series “Una visione globale”: Arte Povera’s Worlds, a four-part lecture series exploring new insights into Arte Povera promoted by Magazzino and organized by 2019-20 Scholar-in-Residence Tenley Bick.

Massafra with Angelo Delli Santi

It is the soft limestone carved by time, water and man, along the slopes of the Murgian foothills overlooking the plain of Taranto, that marks the character of Massafra built between two ravines. Angelo Delli Santi gives us glimpses, opens some house doors to show how the caves, inhabited since classical times, were slowly incorporated into homes over the centuries and have been transformed into bedrooms, kitchens, warehouses. Even the courtyards overlooked by several houses, here called “Vicinanza” (neighbourhood), are carved into the soft rock to serve as meeting points, outdoor workplaces and also to channel rainwater to the tanks. A unique urban landscape that, in 1964 Pasolini, who was in search of places to shoot his “The Gospel according to St. Matthew”, found to be like the Nazareth he was looking for.

Author: Nicolai Ciannamea

The video was realized in the field of the project Artvision+

CANNE DELLA BATTAGLIA

Canne della Battaglia with Nunzia Antonino, actress and Miranda Carrieri, Canne della Battaglia Director. The words of Titus Livius, Polybius and Paolo Rumiz, resonate on the hill in Canne, with the voice of Miranda Carrieri, Director of the Antiquarium and the Archaeological Park of Canne della Battaglia and the actress Nunzia Antonino, to conjure up the story of Hannibal and the deadly struggle between Carthage and Rome. In the valley between river Ofanto and the high ground, 9 kilometres from the sea, in the scorching August of 216 BC, history took a turn that forever conditioned military strategy and the destinies of the Mediterranean. The stones that make up the archaeological park of Canne, stones that were walls, houses, churches, are able to speak, they are just whispers, vague as puffs of wind and tell the small stories of men without a name and big stories of famous generals.

Author: Nicolai Ciannamea

The video was realized in the field of the project Artvision+

VISIT FASANO WITH ARCHITECTS MARTINO PINTO & LUIGI DE PALMA

A short but intense journey around the idea of beauty. Architects Martino Pinto and Luigi de Palma guided our cameras in rediscovering the sense of measure, a taste for collectivity and detail as a common trait of living, inhabiting and working in the Apulia of the districts around Fasano, an ancient dowry preserved over time. It can be found in the small medieval rock settlement of Masseria San Marco and in the elegant seventeenth-century citrus grove of Masseria La Cerasina. “The great beauty is to be able to merge everyday life with work and lifestyle.”

Author: Nicolai Ciannamea

The video was realized in the field of the project Artvision+

FROM LECCE TO GAGLIANO DEL CAPO TRAVELLING WITH THE WRITER RAFFAELE GORGONI

The landscape does not lie, says Raffaele Gorgoni on the journey between Lecce and Gagliano del Capo on board one of the trains that travels, slowly you could say, to the heel of Italy. And the landscape tells the story of Salento today but also and especially the Salento of yesterday. The quaint little stations were built away from the villages but close to where tobacco was produced, to the vineyards and cellars, to the oil mills. And this train that brought those products to the sea and northern Europe for more than a century was the train of poets like Bodini and, for many generations, also the train of students who took advantage of the slow pace of the journey to do their homework or review their lessons.

Author: Nicolai Ciannamea

The video was realized in the field of the project Artvision+

DIALOGHI 3.0. PINO PASCALI E CLAUDIO CINTOLI

Author: Paola Verardi

The video tells about the exhibition Dialoghi 3.0 which compares the practice by Pino Pascali, focusing much more on Art Povera works, with Claudio Cintoli’s art. The show is curated by Rosalba Branà.

HANS OP DE BEECK

Author: Paola Verardi

The Museum Pino Pascali awarded Hans Op De Beeck with Pino Pascali Prize 2017. The belgian artist tell us about his work and the show he presented in Polignano.

GILBERT AND GEORGE

Author: Paola Verardi

ArtMovie – the cycle of talk about art and cinema – curated by Alessandra Mammì e coordinated by Santa Nastro – presents a special event with Gilbert and George. They were in Polignano a Mare talking about their art and practice. Also the museum exhibited an artwork from a famous apulian collection in a project curated by Lia De Venere.

IGINIO IURILLI/ FRANCESCO BOSSO: A WHITE TALE

Author: Paola Verardi
A sculptor and a photographer together in an exhibition that work on the idea of “white” – supernatural, conceptual and spiritual -. Curated by Antonio Frugis.

CRISTIANO DE GAETANO/ SPEED OF LIFE

Author: Paola Verardi

Curator Christian Caliandro tells about the amazing art of Cristiano De Gaetano who died when he was only 36 years old. The exhibition is the first organized 4 years after his death and show his incredible practice.

CHRISTIANE LÖHR

Author: Paola Verardi
The video tells about the exhibition of the XIX Pino Pascali Art Award granted to the german artist Christiane Löhr. Born in Wiesbaden, Christiane Löhr lives and works between Cologne and Prato. She studied with Jannis Kounellis at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Her work has recently been shown at the Kunsthaus Baselland in Basel, where she granted an important solo exhibition. Her work has been show in the 49. Venice Biennale curated by Harald Szeemann. Her works of art can be found and was exhibited in prestigious both private and public collections.

MIKI CARONE

Author: Nicolai Ciannamea
Some days with the artist: “Miki Carone”, reportage, 26 minutes long, with Miki Carone and Roberto Lacarbonara, curator. The natural element, the Mediterranean sea, the arabic tales, the comics heroes are always present in Carone’s artwork. Through his own words, Miki Carone explains the developments of his poetics.

FRANCESCO SCHIAVULLI

Author: Nicolai Ciannamea
“A day with artist”, a long documentary (26′) about Francesco Schiavulli. The artist and Mirella Casamassima, critic and curator, take us into his artistic and everyday life by showing us how and where he works and telling us about the story of many of his artworks. During the movie, the artist also describes his own research and through his own words, Francesco Schiavulli explains the developments of his poetics.

GIANNI LEONE

Author: Nicolai Ciannamea
The video tells about a retrospective exhibition dedicated to Gianni Leone and curated by Rosalba Branà and Antonio Frugis. Inventory: 1979  2015, is an exhibition that retraces the career and life of the artist through over 100 shots taken from the 1970s to today and which portray the urban landscape that stretches from Bari over the whole Apulian territory. After having donated more than 1000 photographs to the CSAC – Centre for Studies and Archive of the Documents of the University of Parma- the artist made an important donation to the Pino Pascali Museum.

COEXISTENCE, FOR A NEW ADRIATIC KOINÉ

Author: Santa Nastro
The last stage of the show Coexistence was in Polignano a Mare documenting the Adriatic art scene with the artworks and the locations involved in the project arTVision. The final show was also the opportunity to draw conclusions of this Adriatic travel with its differences and similarities.

LIGHT RESIDENCIES

Author: Santa Nastro
Students, professors and artists speak about the role of the Academies of Fine Arts in the framework of a project run by arTVision. These are the “light residencies” a few days of meetings, seminars, workshops, dedicated to selected students and future artists from the four partner countries of the project. Bari, Lecce, Foggia and Polignano a Mare welcome them with activities and more.

IL MARE E IL CIELO. PINO PASCALI AND LUIGI GHIRRI

Author: Santa Nastro
Rosalba Branà, director of the Pino Pascali Museum and the curator Anna d’Elia talk about the show “Il Mare e il Cielo” (the sea and the sky) which brought for the first time to Puglia one of the most important artworks by Pino Pascali “32 mq di mare circa”, completely restored. This was also compared with “the sky” by Luigi Ghirri, 365 photographs of the sky, as with the days in a year. The artist, from Emilia Romagna, is one of the most well known, influential and inspiring photographers of the last century: the relationship with Pino Pascali’s poetry – ideal and not real – was very lyrical in the landscape of Polignano a Mare.

IL MARE E IL CIELO. PINO PASCALI AND LUIGI GHIRRI

Author: Santa Nastro
Rosalba Branà, director of the Pino Pascali Museum and the curator Anna d’Elia talk about the show “Il Mare e il Cielo” (the sea and the sky) which brought for the first time to Puglia one of the most important artworks by Pino Pascali “32 mq di mare circa”, completely restored. This was also compared with “the sky” by Luigi Ghirri, 365 photographs of the sky, as with the days in a year. The artist, from Emilia Romagna, is one of the most well known, influential and inspiring photographers of the last century: the relationship with Pino Pascali’s poetry – ideal and not real – was very lyrical in the landscape of Polignano a Mare.

SAC – MARI TRA LE MURA

Author: Santa Nastro
To be an artist in residence is an opportunity to understand new artistic contexts, meet artists and curators from all over the world, and set up new project. This was also the aim of SAC – Mari tra le Mura and experience run by the Municipalities of Polignano a Mare, Mola di Bari, Conversano, and Rutigliano which hosted 20 artists who came from all over Europe, inviting them to work in beautiful territories and to participate in an itinerant show in the various venues of the programme.

IGINIO IURILLI

Author: Nicolai Ciannamea
A documentary about Iginio Iurilli. The artist take us into his artistic and everyday life by showing us where he works, how he spends his spare time and telling us about the story of many of his artworks. One of them, the purple sea urchin was, during the filming, the main attraction of a show at the Museum Pino Pascali.

DARIO AGRIMI E RAFFAELE FIORELLA. DUEL

Author: Nicolai Ciannamea
Two artists, Dario Agrimi and Raffaele Fiorella are interviewed here on the occasion of their show at the Foundation Pino Pascali. Different in their research and method they engage in a real “duel” that is reported by the documentary.

DANIELE D’ACQUISTO

Author: Santa Nastro
The Contemporary Art Museum “Pino Pascali” hosts a project room dedicated to a young Apulian artist: the show described here was created by Daniele D’Acquisto, who lives in Taranto and is already well known nationwide. In this video, the young Apulian artist presents his work, curated by Lorenzo Madaro.

TORRE GUACETO

Author: Santa Nastro
In this video, seven artists (part of a wider corps of 16) talk about a show mixing Art and Nature together: the second asks the first to reflect on the relationship with the environment. This actually happens in two beautiful contexts in Puglia, at the centre of this video: the Castle in Carovigno and the nature reserve of Torre Guaceto, a protected area which for the first time becomes the location of an Art show, curated by Rosalba Branà. The video was granted in Venice with the first arTVision movie award.

POST – YOUNG ALBANIAN ARTIST

Author: Santa Nastro
The curators Antonio Frugis and Roberto Lacarbonara oversee a show depicting the young Albanian art scene, by means of an exhibition of several artworks. Artists such as Endri Dani, Olson Lamaj, Remijon Pronja, Enkelejd Zonja, are also involved in the discussion.

VALERIE DA COSTA ON PINO PASCALI

Author: Santa Nastro
A French scholar, Valérie Da Costa, is carrying out research on the artist Pino Pascali. She has already written a book on the subject of Lucio Fontana and his sculptures, and now she is “walking” in Pino Pascali’s footsteps. In the documentary we follow her steps and listen to a conversation with the journalist Pietro Marino, who met the artist at her last Biennale and curated the opening show of the Pascali Foundation in Polignano a Mare, in cooperation with the critic Achille Bonito Oliva and the director Rosalba Branà. Branà and Marino tell us about that experience.

STILL HOUSE GROUP

Author: Santa Nastro
This movie introduces the Still House Group, a crew of several artists working in New York City, trying to go beyond the global crisis and to create new strategies of co-working. The movie also describes the show at the Pino Pascali Foundation, in Polignano a Mare.

PLESCALI – XVII PINO PASCALI AWARD

Author: Santa Nastro
Fabrizio Plessi talks about the influence of Pino Pascali on his work, in a conversation with the art critic Marco Tonelli. Plessi takes the opportunity of this video to present his artwork for the XVII Pino Pascali Art Award, also as the main work of a show at the Pino Pascali Foundation during the summer 2014. Plessi met Pascali in 1968, who became a source of inspiration for him: the artwork is a tribute to his colleague, and was named “Plescali”, a mixture of their surnames.

VIRGINIA RYAN – FLUID TALES

Author: Santa Nastro
Virginia Ryan is a female artist who comes from Australia. However she is a traveller, a nomad. She has spent her entire life moving between Africa, Italy and the rest of the world. Her work, here represented at the Foundation Pino Pascali tells about the myth of the Siren and of Mami-Wata. At the same time the documentary is an opportunity to explore her connections with the famous African artist Frederic Bruly Bouabré.

FELLOW TRAVELLERS

Pino Pascali’s work was often presented – during the numerous exhibitions dedicated to the artist following his premature death – as isolated from the context in which he found himself working, namely the city of Rome in the period between the late 1950s and 1968. The exhibition Compagni di strada (Fellow Travellers) aims at keeping the memory of the artist’s work alive and documenting what happened around him during his life through a selection of works by his “Fellow Travellers” who are internationally famous artists who are still very active today, such as: Kounellis, Ceroli, Fioroni, Lombardo, Mambor, Tacchi; and others who are no longer with us such as Schifano, Angeli, Festa.

MARIA GRAZIA CARRIERO

For the third appointment of the art fair “The Museum and its surroundings”, the Pino Pascali Museum Foundation hosts Maria Grazia Carriero’s solo exhibition At home 1578 curated by Nicola Zito.
The artist’s strong personal and cultural experience in Marrakech is the foundation of At home 1578, exhibition in which the artist presents two series of her works, Nature and Circle that she has created with durum wheat pasta that she has previously burned and, by using resins, fixed on forex panels. This cycle of works is the result of an artistic and creative study that lasted 1578 hours.

FABIO MAZZOLA

The art fair “The Museum and its surroundings – idea and substance” continues with the solo exhibition of the works of artist Fabio Mazzola entitled Sull’autobus n. 4 ho incontrato chi ha sognato di tagliarmi la testa (On bus number 4 I met the person who dreamt of beheading me) curated by Edoardo Trisciuzzi. With his performance the artist brings the routine of city life in the Pino Pascali Museum.
The concept of territory, especially in so far as it is conceived as “non-places” – term created by Marc Augé to refer to the anonymity of certain gatherings of today’s society – is essential to Fabio Mazzola’s artistic research. As a matter of fact, he sees territory as a screen on which to project his reflections on the relationship between individuals and their surroundings, thanks to a sharp experimental and technical versatility.

A VIEW OF THE WORLD

The exhibition offers a selection of artworks belonging to Douglas Andrews. He owns one of the most interesting and widest international private collection. The critics and curators Guido Orsini and Mary Angela Schroth, have selected the following artists: Donald Baechler, Robert Beck, Paolo Canevari, Jessica Carroll, Elmgreen & Dragset, Giuseppe Gabellone, Robert Gober, Arturo Herrera, William Kentridge, Jeff Koons, Sarah Lucas, Marepe, Olafur Eliasson, Tom Sachs and Andrea Zittel.

PIERPAOLO MICCOLIS

The art fair “The Museum and its surroundings – idea and substance” designed by the Pino Pascali Foundation, investigates and presents to the public the works of young artists in Apulia. The aim of the 2013 edition is to produce monthly exhibitions and workshops during which young emerging artists will give a “live” presentation of their artistic background, ad of how they personally transformed their ideas into substance. The fair opens with the solo exhibition Nella coda sta il veleno (Poison is in the tail) by the Apulian artist Pierpaolo Miccolis curated by Isabella Battista.

NATHALIE DJURBERG & HANS BERG – PINO PASCALI AWARD 2012

“Entering Nathalie Djurberg‘s territory is like crossing the threshold of our own subconscious. Eros and Thanatos chase each other, taboos are visually explored in a perfect synchrony between images and Hans Berg’s music. She has created tales for adults, in the dramatic tension between humour and horror, perversion and psychosis, which represents the allegoric context in which the young Swedish artist reveals the collective dynamics of our time, the obsessive rhythms of our actions, our difficulties in establishing a serene balance between man and nature”.

BERTOZZI AND CASONI – PINO PASCALI AWARD 2011

Bertozzi & Casoni guide viewers through the realm of hyperrealism, where everything is fake, a Disney world which is, however, cruel and void of anything fantastic. Men’s surroundings are just a pile of their own waste. The exhibition, curated by Carlo Berardi and Jason Lee, shows works from 1999 to 2011. A common theme shared by the exhibited works is the homage to the simulation of everyday activities, the representation of waste, urban waste and man-made destruction of nature. These are the basic elements of the poetic language adopted by the two famous artists.

AUDITORIA – LESLIE DEERE – 2007

Leslie Deere’s sound installations are ideally connected to the linguistic and musical experiments led by the Fluxus movement, and are accompanied by a mise-en-scène that is at times spectacular or more intimate and poetic. The works have been realised especially for the Pino Pascali Museum following a series of trips to Apulia the young artist made in order to “collect” sound and visual material and get acquainted with “Pascalian” surroundings.

JAKE & DINOS CHAPMAN – PINO PASCALI AWARD 2010

The Chapman brothers have been able to inspire in the language of contemporary art a new aesthetic vitality that is suspended between tragical beauty and harsh reality. Therefore, they have shifted art onto the symbolical level represented by the irrationality of life and death, and have stripped naked the false consciousness of time and the turmoil of the human soul“.

CONTAMINATIONS. PINO PASCALI AND 1960S CINEMA


This exhibition is held within the Educational Section and is curated by Yamuna J. S. Illuzzi and Serena Specchio, in collaboration with the Apulia Region – Mediterranean Culture and Tourism Division and the regional Multimedia Library. This project aims at analysing the possible influences between Pino Pascali’s artwork and cinema, through the exhibition of posters of films produced and distributed in cinemas between 1960 and 1968, the year in which the artist passed away.

JAPAN TODAY

“Video zoom: Japan. Re-frame daily life: Japanese video art over the last ten years”, art fair curated by Kenichi Kondo, associate curator at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. The exhibition includes the videos of ten young Japanese artists who tell us about new scenarios of Japanese daily life dictated by the economic crisis that has done away with all social and political guarantees and has shifted people’s attention on those minor events that might turn an ordinary day into a special one. This has been visually narrated with intensity, as well as a critical and humorous eye.

EAST/WEST – A DIALOGUE BETWEEN APULIA AND MONTENEGRO

This exhibition is the fruit of the collaboration between the Pino Pascali Foundation and the Ministry of Culture of Montenegro, with the support of the Apulia Region, the Consulate of Montenegro in Bari and the Gramsci Foundation in Apulia.
The project, curated by Rosalba Branà with the collaboration of Antonio Frugis and Mariapaola Spinelli, is held in Cetinje, with a collective exhibition of Apulian artists and a selection of video artworks from the Pino Pascali Museum collection. The main aim behind this project is to create a common cultural network among the countries that overlook the Adriatic Sea.