Palazzo Cucchiari hosts 30 extraordinary photographs dedicated to the work of the divine Michelangelo by Aurelio Amendola, one of the masters of contemporary photography.
True and authentic depictions of very famous sculptures, the photographs by Amendola look at the Michelangelo’s marbles from a new point of view which pays attention to the language of the sculpture and the quality of material, but it is also full of feelings and pathos for the humanity of Michelangleo’s figures.
Extraordinary marbles give life to sinuous shapes for which Amendola exalts not only the anatomic details. He is also able to have the viewer feel the surge of the skin, as to suggest the life pulse of bodies, which are only for a moment, as Michelangelo would say, imprisoned into “alpine and hard stone.”
Everything has been done with no trick, with the elegant simplicity of black and white images, in which the hand of Michelangelo and the extraordinary sentiment of Amendola’s light interact perfectly.
The exhibition will be hosted under the vaults of the underground floor of the Palace, whose restoration has been completed and which is opened to the public for the first time.
This is also why the exhibition path results as particularly evocative and it has the visitors appreciate completely the sculptures of the great Renaissance master, with details of the new sacristy of San Lorenzo, among which the admirable portraits of Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici, and the three Pietà pieces, the one in St Peter cathedral, the Deposition and Rondanini Pietà, together with the precious portraits of David and Moses, and also the Louvre Slaves and those of the Accademia Gallery in Florence, the Adolescent of the Hermitage and the Archer of the Metropolitan of New York.
During his career, Aurelio Amendola (Pistoia, 1938) has dedicated to the sculpture photography especially, by recording the work of great Italian masters of the Renaissance, such as Jacopo della Quercia, Donatello and Michelangelo and taking pictures of Tuscan art masterpieces like the Giovanni Pisano’s pulpit and the friezes by Giovanni della Robbia for the Ospedale del Ceppo in Pistoia, Santa Maria della Spina and the Baptistery of Pisa.
In 1994, he was given the Oscar Goldoni prize for his photographic volume Un occhio su Michelangelo (An Eye on Michelangelo), which is dedicated to the Medici chapel of San Lorenzo in Florence. In 1997, he was given the Cino da Pistoia career prize and he has been the first photographer to be invited to the Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg ten years later, with an exhibition dedicated to the sculptures by Michelangelo.
Thanks to his meeting with artists, Amendola has collected a wide gallery of portraits of the most famous ones of the past century, from De Chirico to Lichtenstein, from Pomodoro to Schifano, from Kosuth to Warhol. He has also done solo exhibitions dedicated to the greatest sculptors and painters of the 20th century, among them the ones on Marino Marini, Kounellis and Burri.
In Italy, his photographs have been exhibited at the Academy of France in 1990, at the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro in 2005, at the Rivoli Castle in 2008 and during the Venice Biennial in 2011
Among his latest exhibitions, we mention:
“Burri e Pistoia. La Collezione Gori e le fotografie di Amendola (Burri and Pistoia. The Gori Collection and the photos by Amendola)” at Palazzo Sozzifanti of Pistoia in 2015 and “Andy Warhol fotografato da Aurelio Amendola. New York 1977 e 1986 (Andy Warhol photographed by Aurelio Amendola. New York 1977 and 1986)” which can be seen at the Uffizi in Florence from 4th March to 10th April 2016.
from 20th March to 12th June 2016
free admission
PALAZZO CUCCHIARI
Via Cucchiari 1
54033 Carrara
Tel: 05858 72355
Mail: info@palazzocucchiari.it
