The exhibition ‘Dante ipermoderno. Illustrazioni dantesche nel mondo, 1983-2020‘ offers a representative itinerary of the most recent phases of the great history of illustrations of Dante’s works in the contemporary age.
The nine silkscreens by Tom Phillips combine the immediacy of pop art with a evocative, refined, at times even informal, research. The tempera paintings by Monika Beisner, the first female artist to illustrate the whole of the Divine Comedy, pays attention to detail based on a figurative tradition that dates back to Botticelli. Mimmo Paladino uses drawing, reinterpreted experimentally, to probe the archaic roots of the Divine Comedy, following a “shamanic” approach. Paolo Barbieri reconciles tradition with innovation: viewers can watch the “matite”, the original black sketches, transform into the final colourful prints, with a marked fantasy atmosphere. Emiliano Ponzi, on the other hand, goes totally digital, creating images of surreal tone and with a disturbing vein.
The exhibition that will be proposed in various foreign venues is conceived by the Società Dante Alighieri and the Dante Group of the ADI (Italianists’ Association), curated by Giorgio Bacci, Marcello Ciccuto and Alberto Casadei, and is created by Art Media Studio of Florence, thanks to the support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
We thank the artists Paolo Barbieri, Monika Beisner, Mimmo Paladino, Tom Phillips and Emiliano Ponzi, the Fondazione Memofonte and Sergio Bonelli Editore for authorizing the online publication of the catalogue dedicated to “Dante ipermoderno. Illustrazioni dantesche nel mondo, 1983-2021”.
