MAXXI: Tra/Between

At MAXXI two exhibitions in one, “Roma Interrotta” and “Piero Sartogo e gli artisti”, united by a common title that sums up the spirit of both shows: “Tra/Between Art and Architecture”.

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“Tra/Between Art and Architecture” is curated by Achille Bonito Oliva. The show looks back at a successful period characterised by an original attention toward contemporary artistic and architectural culture, triggered in the 1970s by the work of the Associazione Incontri Internazionali d’Arte, under the guidance of Graziella Lonardi Buontempo. The title of the exhibition emphasises the contamination typical of these years between criticism and methods of exhibiting. It was during this period that shows such as “Roma Interrotta”, and the work of architects like Piero Sartogo, spoke of a courageous time of exploration and exchanges between the diverse languages of art.

During this period Piero Sartogo produced a true spatial interpretation of critical issues. Achille Bonito Oliva went as far as defining him “an artitecht, the author of a dialogue between macrospace and the micro-spaces of the works on display. The sign of an interdisciplinary vision of designing and making”.

“Roma Interrotta” (Carlo Scarpa Gallery) is a re-presentation of the historic exhibition presented in 1978 inside Trajan’s Market. Conceived by Piero Sartogo and organised by Incontri Internazionali d’Arte, the show was characterised by an interdisciplinary approach to the arts. On this occasion 12 internationally recognised architects were invited to “imagine Rome” as if the urban metamorphoses of the city, from Italian Unity onward, had never taken place.

The starting point was Giambattista Nolli’s Map of Rome. Designed in 1748 it represents that last grandiose mapping of the city. The result was a corpus of 118 original drawings by Costantino Dardi, Romaldo Giurgola, Michael Graves, Antoine Grumbach, Leon Krier, Robert Krier, Paolo Portoghesi, Aldo Rossi, Colin Rowe, Piero Sartogo, James Stirling and Robert Venturi, that created a “New Rome”: fantastic, surreal and suggestive.

The exhibition gradually became an icon, presented in prestigious museums and research centres around the globe, including the UIA International Congress in Mexico City, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Architectural Association in London, Columbia University in New York, the São Paolo Biennale and the Venice Biennale. The show now comes to the MAXXI with an enriched design that presents the 122 drawings illustrating the projects presented in 1978.

All 122 drawings were donated to the Museum by Gabriella Buontempo and Piero Sartogo and are now part of the MAXXI Architettura permanent collection. This acquisition completes the already rich donation to the MAXXI (more than 100,000 letters, drawings, projects, notes, catalogues) of the Incontri Internazionali d’Arte archive in 2012.

The dialogue between Art and Architecture was at the heart of Piero Sartogo’s activities: he was responsible for the “image coordination” of such important contemporary art exhibitions as “Amore Mio”, “Vitalità del Negativo” (1970), “Contemporanea” (1973 – 1974), a solo show organised by INARCH (1977) and the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1978). This same dialogue is also manifest in his architectural work, developed in collaboration with some of the most important artists of the 1970s, including Daniel Buren, Gianni Colombo, Joseph Kosuth, Fabio Mauri and Giulio Paolini.

Precisely this pursuit of the relationship and creative comparison between the arts promoted by the Associazione Incontri Internazionali d’Arte is reflected in “Piero Sartogo e gli artisti”: the MAXXI has selected projects by Sartogo that interact with Art. The exhibition presents the work of various artists, documents, drawings and models that revive this dialogue between various authors.

This relationship is demonstrated in works such as the two projects by Daniel Buren entitled To Place and To transgress that engage the project for the Italian Trade Commission headquarters in New York through oversize images and concept sketches developed by the authors. The large environment of Spazio elastico by Gianni Colombo, an artist who collaborated with Sartogo on the master plan for the 27 towers of the Gescal public housing estate in Sesto San Giovanni. The works of Fabio Mauri, such as the installation Luna, shown during Vitalità del Negativo in 1970, and Schermo Leo Castelli in dialogue with the work of Piero Sartogo, Fabio Mauri, Gino Marotta, Antonio Malavasi and Furio Colombo, entitled Autre Nave, for the 1968 Milan Triennale.

The collaboration with Giulio Paolini and Joseph Kosuth is recounted in the project for a House on Park Avenue, New York. The exhibition features a conceptual reconstruction of the apartment designed by Sartogo according to the principle of the Golden Section, synthetically represented in a grid on the floor depicting the growing dimensional progression codified by this mathematical principle. The piece is accompanied by the representation of the seven columns designed for the house by Paolini, from the Early Dynastic series. The documentation is completed by a reproduction of Joseph Kosuth’s Door, consisting of an invisible door and its definition.

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Left: "Amore Mio", Montepulciano. Archivio SAA. Right: ICE, New York. Photo Norman McGrath

Left: "Roma Interrotta", Manifesto. Archivio SAA. Right: Sede Ordine dei Medici, Roma. Archivio SAA

Biennale di Venezia, 1978. Archivio SAA

"Contemporanea", Roma. Archivio SAA

until September 21, 2014
Tra/Between Arte e Architettura
Roma Interrotta and Piero Sartogo e gli artisti
Fondazione MAXXI
Via Guido Reni 4A
Roma

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