exhibition > Massimo Listri: Italian Wonder (Opening)

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The photographs displayed in the exhibition embody the essential traits of Massimo Listri’s artistic style: the central perspective that places architecture within a strict aesthetic equilibrium and enhances its harmony, through natural light that endows an almost metaphysical sacredness and through the theatricality of the inanimate scenes. Furthermore, the images suspend these extraordinary corners of Italy in time. Rooms are frozen between past and future and become the expressions of an elusive moment.

In Listri’s shots, contemporaneity is found in the eternity of the archetypes that span the history of Western architecture. By means of a cultured stylization, reminiscent of some of Stanley Kubrick’s cinematographic sets, Listri extracts places from history, goes beyond their material sumptuousness and consigns them to the future, making them familiar to everyone. The interiors are thus presented as deeply Italian images, clearly recognizable and rooted in the architectural imagery of our country.

Timeless, and therefore always contemporary, these images show Massimo Listri’s art in representing art.

PHOTOGRAPHER MASSIMO LISTRI

Massimo Listri began his career as a photographer at a very young age, with a series of black and white portraits of great people of the 20th century, from Acton to Pasolini. When he was seventeen, he worked with Bolaffi Arte. In 1981, he met Franco Maria Ricci and started a collaboration with the magazine FMR, which lasted twenty-five years. He has published over eighty books with the most prestigious European and American publishers, including Taschen, Rizzoli New York, Magnus, Konemann and Treccani, photographing ancient and modern architecture, elegant or abandoned places, intimate environments as well as boundless spaces.

Since 2003, he has combined his professional activity with artistic experimentation, embarking on a creative path that led him to exhibit for the first time in London in 2007, at the Voena+Robilant gallery. Palazzo Reale in Milan hosted his first solo show in 2008. Since then, he has held solo exhibitions all over the world, including those at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, at Palazzo Pitti, at the Museums of Modern Art in Bogota and Buenos Aires, among many more.

In 2019, he was named artist of the year by the magazine Il Giornale dell’Arte. His works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Vatican Museums, the Pecci Museum of Modern Art and the State Museum of Dresden. In 2014, his archive, which collects images from over 3,500 places in the world, was donated to the Listri Foundation for the Visual Arts, set up in Florence to preserve and enhance it and to promote photography.

ARCHITECT RENATA CRISTINA MAZZANTINI

Architect Renata Cristina Mazzantini, PhD, started her career as an architect in 1998 focusing her professional activities on the enhancement of historic buildings, with special attention towards restoration and museum fitting. She is adjunct professor at the Politecnico of Milan and at LUISS University in Rome and is also author of many articles and books.

She has curated a number of special exhibitions and cultural projects, among which Quirinale Contemporaneo (an exhibition of contemporary artworks and design-works inside the residence of the President of the Italian Republic), Reggia Contemporanea in the Royal palace of Monza, Palazzo Borromeo Contemporaneo for the Embassy to the Holy See, ARSxIUS for the Court of Justice SSM, and Mims Contemporaneo for the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.

As an architect, it is worth citing her involvement with the transformation into an accommodation facility of former “Edificio Compartimentale FF.SS.” in Via Marsala in Rome with its adjoining archaeological park “Mura Serviane”, the transformation into an accommodation facility of Palazzo Bandini and adjacent Duomo di Città Della Pieve, the enhancement of Villa Svezia and its historic garden in Rome. Among planned and/or directed restoration interventions, we recall Renata’s involvement in the ex-Istituto Geologico, Palazzo Montecitorio, the architectural complex of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, and the ex-convent of Santa Maria in Campo Marzio, all in Rome. Among exhibition projects, we recall Renata’s involvement in “Expo Belle Arti” at Palazzo Isimbardi in Milan, “Permanent exhibition of parliamentary history” at Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome, “Georgia O’Keeffe” at the Rome Museum Foundation, “Palais Farnèse” at the Embassy of France in Italy, “Darwin week” at Villa Borghese in Rome, and “The Dancing Satyr” at the Capitoline Museums in Rome.

Finally, Architect Mazzantini was appointed to many important positions, including Artistic and Architectural Advisor to the House of Representatives (2001-2014); Advisor for the valorization of museum artifacts for FAI Fondo Ambiente Italiano (2013-2014); Italian representative to the Italian National Commission for UNESCO (2004-2007); and President of the ISIA in Faenza (2005-2007), among others.