Luce Movimento. Il cinema sperimentale di Marinella Pirelli
curated by Lucia Aspesi, Iolanda Ratti
The Museo del Novecento presents a monographic exhibition devoted to Marinella Pirelli (1925-2009). With this exhibition the Milan-based institution highlights its purpose of presenting, together with the great masters of the 20th century, original figures active in the artistic panorama of the 1900s who are still little known to the public.
The show’s foundation in rigorous research aims to showcase an insightful experimenter of the Italian visual language, re-envisioning her work in relation to the historical context of national and international art while presenting the idea of an interdisciplinary and intermediary 20th century.
Marinella Pirelli was active in the Italian art scene of the post-war period in the fields of painting and the study of moving images and light environments. Pirelli was notable for her constant and untiring research efforts, which led to pioneering results in the field of Italian Experimental Cinema in the 1960s. The exhibition focuses precisely on this aspect of her work, considering the period between 1961, the year of her first animated film, to 1974, when the artist made her last 16mm film, Doppio Autoritratto, before withdrawing into a silence lasting almost thirty years.
Light Movement. The Experimental Cinema of Marinella Pirelli is promoted and produced by the City of Milan | Culture with Electa and curated by Lucia Aspesi and Iolanda Ratti. This show follows the monographic exhibition at the Permanente (Milan, 2003) and an exhibition project focussed on light works presented at Villa Panza (Varese, 2004).
The Museo del Novecento presents the artist’s films, fully contextualised as part of the experimental cinema of the 1960s and 70s. These constitute on the one hand, striking films based in a meditation on the phenomena of light and of its refraction that play with the balance between colour and abstract forms; and on the other, astute reflections on femininity and on being an artist.
The focal point of the exhibition path is the Film Ambiente, an immersive cinematographic structure, created and patented in 1969, which underlines Pirelli’s innovative contribution to the Italian Expanded Cinema and designs for “light environments” of the early 1970s.
In addition to the works dedicated to moving images and graphic production, there are original documents from the Marinella Pirelli Archive, such as correspondence and plans, together with photos of which some were taken by iconic photographers of that period such as Gianni Berengo Gardin, Fabio Donato and Ugo Mulas.
The catalogue, published by Electa, is a full monograph on Marinella Pirelli’s cinematographic work, presenting for the first time a complete and significant critical filmography.
Start date
Friday 22 march 2019
End date
Sunday 25 august 2019
Museo del Novecento
Piazza del Duomo, 8,
20123 Milano
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