IDOLS The power of image
Venice, Palazzo Loredan
Until 21 January 2019

An incredible and unmissable exhibition itinerary, fascinating and educational that also allows you to better understand the art world. The exhibition Idols The Power of Image is promoted by the Giancarlo Ligabue Foundation and offers a journey through time through 100 oriental and western artifacts representing the human body of 4000-2000 BC. Some elements are rare and of great historical-scientific value. "The beginnings of the anthropomorphic figurative culture, the founding myths of humanity, the representation of power, be it of fertilization, divine or heroic: in this exhibition it is possible to find all this. A unique and unrepeatable journey that leads us to the origins of the depictions of the human body: from the first still ambiguous images and the dubious interpretation, in the Neolithic age, to their evolution in the Bronze Age ", explains Inti Ligabue, president of the Giancarlo Ligabue Foundation . "A path that, crossing mountains, overcoming steppes and deserts, crossing seas and oceans, reveals transversal connections, commonalities of feeling and contacts in very distant territories".

In the collection there is an iconic work, which scholars know well and to which our name has been attributed: the so-called Venus Ligabue. A Battrian statuette of the 3rd millennium BC purchased by my father in the early seventies and became famous thanks to the very important studies he conducted in an area of the Turkestan Afghan, which today we identify as Bactria: the ancient name of a place and a civilization that he, among the first, illustrated in a volume ("Battriana" - Erizzo 1988) which is still a milestone in this field ". Adds Inti Ligabue.

Venus Ligabue, Eastern Iran, Central Asia, Oxus Civilization (2200-1800 BC), Chlorite, Limestone, Alt. 11 cm, width 13.2 cm. Ligabue Collection, Venice

Ferdinando Scianna - Journey Tale Memory
Casa dei Tre Oci, Venice - from 31 August to 2 February 2020

Ferdinando Scianna's black and white photographs always leave their mark. He was just over twenty years old when, in 1965, with Leonardo Sciascia he published the essay Feste Religiose, a volume that with texts and photos tells the materialistic essence of the processions in Sicily. Since then he has continued to express his talent and curiosity with very intense shots. They do not only tell about Sicilian traditions and culture, but talk about current events, travel, war, masters of the world of art, culture and even fashion. The latter experience started with Dolce & Gabbana and with her iconic model Marpessa. From Bagheria to the Bolivian Andes, moreover, there are endless suggestions that his magical click has captured. But it insn't all. There are the reportages (let's not forget that he is the first Italian to be part, since 1982, of the photojournalistic agency Magnum), the landscapes, his thematic obsessions like mirrors, animals. The common thread is always the same: the search for a form in the chaos of life.

Marpessa. Caltagirone, 1987

Leonardo Sciascia. Racalmuto, 1964

Processione dei misteri del venerdì Santo. Ciminna, 1964

A good opportunity to get to know more deeply Ferdinando Scianna is the anthological exhibition at Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice which offers 180 shots that retrace more than 50 years of the Sicilian photographer's. "I am a reporter. My fundamental reference is my master par excellence, Henri Cartier-Bresson, for whom the photographer must aspire to be an invisible witness, who never intervenes to change the world and the moments he reads and interprets of reality. I have always made a clear distinction between the images found and those built. I have always considered my belonging to the side of the photographers that find the images, those that tell (and tell you) like in a mirror ”.