Entering Bologna’s Galleria Maggiore in the late afternoon of a Monday at the end of July—while outside the heat engulfs everything—induces a kind of disorientation. There is no sign of an imminent closing, no hint of the “summer break” that Maggiore, too, will eventually take: on the walls still hang the works from Sandro Chia’s solo exhibition, “Andare Oltre”; in the offices, where we find Franco and Roberta Calarota at work, along with their daughter Alessia, and Francesca and Isotta at their computers, the atmosphere vibrates with fervor and energy. The Calarotas immediately begin to speak, with youthful enthusiasm, about their future projects - where the commercial aspect is always evident, yet never separated from a cultural dimension. The general economic crisis is not underestimated, but here the effort is to overcome it by seizing the opportunities and challenges it presents, redefining choices and strategies. It is well known that the Galleria Maggiore, for several years now, has chosen to adopt an international profile: through the type of artists it represents, through its presence at major reference fairs, and through its ability to collaborate in organizing exhibitions in public art spaces (closing on September 30th at the Saint-Bénin Center in Aosta, the exhibition “Giorgio de Chirico. The Labyrinth of Dreams and Ideas”).
The Galleria Maggiore will open the next exhibition season on September 20th with an anthological show dedicated to Roberto Sebastian Matta (Santiago de Chile, 1911 – Civitavecchia, 2002), on the centenary of his birth and the tenth anniversary of his death. The Calarotas had maintained with him fifteen years of close, ongoing collaboration. The exhibition presents forty works created from the 1950s onward (paintings, sculptures, ceramics), in which the visionary vitality of an artist emerges—one who painted a cosmos in perpetual turmoil, stirred by metamorphosis and inhabited by mutant beings. In January 2013, the Galleria Maggiore will work closely with the Estorick Collection of Modern Art in London, directed by Roberta Cremonini, on a major exhibition of Giorgio Morandi (seventy watercolours, drawings, and engravings), accompanied by a show of photographs by Nino Migliori (Bologna, 1929), “Morandi’s Places”. In these images, this ingenious explorer of photographic processes and materials has captured the landscapes of the Bolognese Apennines (Grizzana and nearby areas) painted by Morandi. Migliori’s works begin with Polaroid photographs on which he intervened moments after the shot, while the image was still forming, producing dense black marks and colour shifts that alter and enhance the original vision. The images were later scanned and reprinted in the format now on display.
After participating last year in Art Basel with a memorable stand of Morandi paintings, the Maggiore showed this year at the Hong Kong Fair, with works by Morandi and Chia. In October it will be at Frieze Masters in London, a new event featuring 90 major galleries from around the world; then, in March 2012, at The Armory Show in New York (Franco Calarota having joined the Selection Committee); and in May of the same year again at the New Hong Fair.
Roberto Sebastian Matta, from 20 September
Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, via d’Azeglio 15, Bologna
tel. 051 235843 — www.maggioregam.com
