Today completely recovered after the earthquake in 2012 and used as a multi-functional structure with a cultural vocation, it is the first time that contemporary art takes place in the ancient Campori Castle of Soliera, on the occasion of the exhibition Intra Moenia – Cattelani Collections. Immediately establishing a close dialogue between antiquity and contemporarity, the exhibition, curated by Lorenzo Respi and opened on Saturday 6 October, describes and narrates, through a selection of emblematic artworks, the history of the Cattelani Collection, or better, of the Collections of the Cattelani family, one of the most important artistic excellences of the area around Modena city.

Staged in five rooms, the exhibition leads the visitor in the presence of a family history – initially perceptible by the fact that one of the rooms has been designed for a children with art works mounted eighty centimeters from the ground – where art and private life stay together until the point of being confused. It illustrates how the Collection, after a first founding core of modern and contemporary sacred art collected by Carlo Cattelani – a collateral event of the exhibition takes place inside the nearby Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli of Limidi – subsequently, thanks to the passion of his wife and his five children, has expanded showing a great index of differentiation, constantly maintaining a strong link with the sphere of spirituality but conjugated according to the human and universal meanings of personal morals and social ethics.

This, therefore, can be considered the common philological denominator of a corpus of pieces that collects fundamental names of the history of contemporary art, represented here by a paradigmatic selection of artworks, some of which are made ad hoc on commission. Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Gunter Brus, Mario Ceroli, Giuseppe Chiari, Hermann Nitsch, Sol LeWitt Nam June Paik, Vettor Pisani, Man Ray, Daniel Spoerri, Ben Vautier and Wolf Vostell, these are some of the artists in the exhibition. They are different for experiences, trends and aesthetic results, so effective in underline the diversity of the Cattelani Collection, which, as the exhibition intends to highlight, is currently widening – however preserving coherence – like a spontaneous and thoughtful collection project, with an undoubtedly plural identity that, like the exhibition route demostrates skillfully, to be narrated needs the eclecticism typical of contemporary creativity.

The event, outlined as an example of high cultural offer in territories outside the mass tourist circuits, accompanied by a catalog curated by Lorenzo Respi that in the texts and in the pictures retraces both the staging and the captions of the exhibition itinerary edited by All Around Art, will be open to the public until January 13, 2019.

Enjoy your visit.

Intra Moenia – Collezioni Cattelani, Room 5, installation view ph. Fabio Fantini