VIS-À-VIS. Tenerani Spina. Dialogue in images
From 28 June on display at the Museum of Rome in Palazzo Braschi
Twenty-five sculptures by Pietro Tenerani will be on display until 12 November 2023, some exhibited for the first time, reinterpreted through the evocative photographs of Luigi Spina, for a long-distance dialogue between sculpture and photography.
The VIS-À-VIS exhibition. Tenerani Spina. Dialogue in images presents twenty-five plaster portraits by Pietro Tenerani, one of the most significant sculptors of the Italian nineteenth century, reread by Luigi Spina, a great interpreter of contemporary art photography.
Two artists distant in time, but united by research on the human figure, in a dialogue that allows us to admire Tenerani's sculptures in an original way, in many cases never previously exhibited, of which Spina's evocative photographs - a diptych for each portrait - made on black and white film and printed personally, they highlight details that sometimes escape even the most attentive observers.
A journey between sculpture and photography which, in addition to contributing to the valorisation of one of the most important nuclei of the Museum of Rome, namely the Tenerani plaster cast gallery, also offers the possibility of closely admiring Luigi Spina's photographic investigation, carried out on portraits of nobles, intellectuals, artists and religious people, all at the center of Roman society in the mid-nineteenth century, of which Tenerani was a leading exponent.
A cross-section that will come to life again, thanks to the photographic investigation of Spina, author of numerous studies that always have the same common thread, namely the search for beauty and perfection, in all areas but above all in sculpture.
With Tenerani's characters, Luigi Spina managed to establish a direct relationship, in a dialogue through images in which light becomes an expressive source and at the same time a tool for understanding the works, since details of the sculptures are captured in the photographs otherwise difficult to see.
In the rooms on the first floor of Palazzo Braschi, Tenerani's portraits are placed in front of the images of Luigi Spina, in a path in which they are divided by theme.
A special thanks to Luigi Spina for involving Studio Rufus in this unprecedented dualism between sculpture and photography.
Photo credit: ©luigispina
