“Una felice corsa” (A happy run) is the title of the exhibition that Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna dedicates to Pinuccia Bernardoni, until 26 February 2023. It is a path of research and artistic practice that restores empathetic emotions to the visitor and which is part of the official Art City 2023 program.
Pinuccia Bernardoni. Una felice corsa, installation view at Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, photo Alessandro Ruggeri, courtesy Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna
The exhibition, curated by Cecilia Canziani, is an interesting and illuminating retrospective that spans the arc of the Tuscan artist’s career from the 1980s to the present day. Pinuccia Bernardoni (1953), is an artist absolutely to be rediscovered, rigorous and deeply emotional, with many years of work and exhibitions behind her. She was born in Bientina (Pisa), she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence with the famous critic Giovanni Maria Accame, graduating in sculpture with Quinto Ghermandi. Since 1997 she has taught Contemporary Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and among her students we find important artists such as Eva Marisaldi, Sabrina Mezzaqui and Mattia Pajé.
Pinuccia Bernardoni, Giallo Arancio Melanzana n. 2, 1988, rice paper, glue, burnt paper, ink, 190 x 210 x 40 cm. Piero Casadei collection, photo Alessandro Ruggeri, courtesy Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna
She has exhibited in Italy and abroad working continuously with Ginevra Grigolo, from the Studio G7 Gallery in Bologna, and with Maria Colao from the Primo Piano Gallery in Rome. The current solo show proposes the idea that the exhibition is a sort of “visual biography” of the artist, the metaphor of the happiness of her works, a journey divided into different artistic production periods, with a constant and linear poetics, founded on the lightness of fragile materials such as rice paper and on the ductility of heavy materials such as iron and lead which become poetic as natural elements born from a “germination” (see, for example, Germinazione n. 2, 1990, iron sheet, rust, paper).
Pinuccia Bernardoni, Autoritratto in rosso, 2017, 5 diptychs (positive and negative), oil brush and punching on parchment paper, 50 x 70 cm each, photo Carlo Favero, courtesy of the artist
As soon as you cross the threshold, you perceive a deep sense of joy and poetry, an enveloping Zen balance. The path is welcomed in three harmonic rooms in which simple shapes and materials intertwine in a dialectical dialogue of references permeated by earthy, calm and natural colors. Some works stand out from the natural neutrals, brightly shining with warm and bright colours: yellow or orange (Giallo Arancio Melanzana n. 2, 1988) and bright red as in Autoritratto in rosso (2017), ten paintings in which we can glimpse a long work of stratification that reproduces different leave shapes with their veins with punching. The recurring motif of the leaf for the artist is “a means and an end” or an idea of “minimal sculpture offered by nature”.
Pinuccia Bernardoni, Omaggio ad Angelika Kauffmann, 1991-2011, due sculture, una in lamiera di ferro decapato, l’altra in lamiera di ferro fiammato, 130 x 60 x 80 cm, photo Alessandro Ruggeri, courtesy Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna
The essential and elegant shapes of the rice paper sculptures on display are intrinsically linked to the iron sculptures: as examples we mention the two versions of Omaggio ad Angelica Kauffmann (1991-2011) in “flamed” sheet iron and in pickled iron, which for its rounded shape and oxidation reflections recalls the cone of natural germinations such as those of flowers or buds. Her sculptural works are vibrant elements suspended in time. Her approach to matter, such as rice paper modulated through hidden copper or iron threads, or like iron plate or lead, has various affinities and references not only with American Minimalism, but also with Arte Povera.
Pinuccia Bernardoni. Una felice corsa, installation view at Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, photo Alessandro Ruggeri, courtesy Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna
Naturally, the artist was greatly fascinated in her aesthetic production by two essential giants: Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana. You can perceive it above all in her concept of time and form, in the slow reflection, in the penetrations and perforations, in the burns of the paper, in the cuts and stratifications. Among her acquaintances at the beginning of her career it is also important to remember the American artist Ellsworth Kelly and the artists Ketty La Rocca and Eva Hesse. A fundamental part of Pinuccia Bernardoni’s reflective and creative work concerns her artist books and her fascinating drawings notebooks which are exhibited in the display case in the last room together with the original catalogs and photos.
Info:
Pinuccia Bernardoni. Una felice corsa
20/01/2023 – 26/02/2023
Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna
Via delle Donzelle, 2 Bologna
www.fondazionedelmonte.it
Manuela Teatini, film maker and journalist, focuses on visual arts, in particular cinema, photography and contemporary art. She has written freelance for years with VOGUE, Uomo VOGUE, ELLE and other cinema, art and new trend magazines. She is the author and director of the docufilms “ART BACKSTAGE. La passione e lo sguardo” (2017),” MASSIMO MININI. Story of a Gallerist “(2019),” GIOVANNI BOLDINI. Il Piacere. Story of the Artist” (2021) awarded at the Terra di Siena International Film Festival 2021.
NO COMMENT