Photo20simo

Despite the first snowstorm of this season, five members of TEC-CH braved the weather last Friday to visit the Museo d'Arte of the City of Lugano, in order to see the Photo20simo (pronounced: fo-to-ven-TAY-si-mo) : maestri della fotografia del XX secolo exhibition. With over 300 photographs from the private collection of Torino's Marco Antonetto, the exhibition is a comprehensive look at the various concepts and genres that inspired masterpieces from artists such as Lucien Clergue, László Moholy-Nagy, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, and many more.

In eight different themes: Abstraction, Portraiture, Art and Artists, Body, Landscape, Reportage, Still Life, and Fashion, the exhibition introduced a variety of ideas with archetypal examples that are signficant over the history of 20th-century. From Moholy-Nagy's photograms in the 1920s to the controversial Mapplethorpe nudes in the 1980s, further to latest photographic works by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, the exhibition leads its visitors to a world of immortalised memories, fantastic techniques and innovation.

One warning, however: with a traditional white-cube gallery approach, the exhibition assumes previous knowledge in art history or history of photography. If possible, a pre-arranged guided tour is highly recommended. Our wonderful and knowledgeable docent, Tiziana, introduced us to unspoken stories and deep meanings of these masterworks that are otherwise unknown to visitors.

Exhibition "This landscape, so calm and so eternal" at the Hermann Hesse Museum in Montagnola

Giosanna Crivelli is an Italian-Swiss photographer. She has known Hesse as a child and later on rediscovered him with fascination. The exhibition opened at the Hermann Hesse Museum on April 4, 2007, "This landscape, so calm, so eternal", displays Giosanna's photos of landscapes "seen through Hesse's eyes". Regina Bucher, the curator of the Hesse Museum insisted that this exhibition is not merely an association of photos with Hesse's quotes, but a vision of nature built on Giosanna's understanding of Hermann Hesse's vision. "Giosanna would go on a mountain and wait for hours until she finds the right light for the photo she wants to take", explains Regina.

The photographs are objects of contemplation, each unique and each in surprising consanance with Hesse's words, displayed near it. What strikes, on entering the exhibition is the cumulated effect of colours, deep blue, violet, red, reddish orange, mineral yellow. As some colours seem un-naturally deep, Regina readily underlined that the photos are not worked with any image-editing program.

The challenge for the artist and for the curator has been to arrange the photos in the small room that the Museum uses for temporary exhibitions. This is the second temporary exhibition I see at the Hesse Museum (the first one was "Rifugio Monte Verità") and every time I am amazed about how simplicity and imagination can exploit a small space. The size of the photos ranges around A4-A3; two photos are enlarged to poster-size, hanged in the middle of the room. Information about the exhibition and the artist is displayed outside, in the hall, so that the room is entirely dedicated to images and Hesse's words.