ITALIAN AUTHOR’S TRAVEL – The theme of travel through five painters, two writers and an Italian songwriter

If traveling within art is your wish, Meeting Benches proposes to broaden your horizons through 2145 km and 25 hours of journey by car, which leads through Italian peninsula. Http://www.italia.it/en/home.html Among many ways how to appreciate expressions of art, what we propose is a “Journey of Author” to get to know eight Italian artists, who have left (and continue to leave), their profound impression, on what the perception of art is for all of us.

Do not forget to take (together with a musical mix of singer-songwriter Gino Paoli), your travel note and a map of Italy (scale 1: 300,000), along with a novel by Susanna Tamaro and a poetry book by Amelia Rosselli. We are ready to enter Italy, starting from Trieste, the town, where the writer SUSANNA TAMARO was born in 1957. She, distant relative of the writer Italo Svevo, published a partially ignored novel by literary critics, anyway ” Follow your heart” has sold millions of copies all over the world.

From Trieste to Monfalcone the journey is short (35 km in 1 hour by car), but you will find here the birthplace of the songwriter Gino Paoli, who was born here in 1934. Not far from Monfalcone, we advise you to stop at Rovereto, to visit the Museum of Modern Art http://www.mart.tn.it/collections.jsp?ID_LINK=688&area=137&id_context=3257, where you can admire painting of Gino Severini: “Portrait of Madame S.”

The second part of your trip in Italy will be more demanding. From Monfalcone to Turin you need pass 525 km and 5 hours of driving. Here lives and works the painter STEFANIA FERSINI. She creates paintings, which look like photos https://www.stefaniafersini.com/, which reflect the excess of visual and artificial products in the world. Focusing on painting from 2012, she has achieved full expressive mastery, painting perfect, but fractured and distorted faces and bodies, where young women forage for consumerism.

From Turin to Genoa, 175 km in 2 hours by car, you will discover the town on the Ligurian seaside, where singer GINO PAOLI has worked as a porter and painter. “Sky in a Room” is his success of the 1960’s, where he tells the story of a room with a violet ceiling, leading you to infinite spaces through a refined melody, within an intensity, which evokes the intimacy of love.

155 km in 2 hours by car from Genoa we head to Lucca, where in 1708, the painter POMPEO GIROLAMO BATONI was born. He studied design in his father’s shop, also deepening pictorial technique under the direction of two famous painters in his town. In what he painted, you can see his sympathy for the melodrama, because his characters express themselves psychologically through gestures and expressions. “The Estasi of St. Catherine of Siena”, a painting of 1743, awaits you in National Museum of Villa Guinigi in Lucca. http://www.luccamuseinazionali.it/it/guinigi/museo-nazionale-di-villa-guinigi

In next part of the journey (130 km in 2 hours by car), we will feel the heart of Tuscany. Leaving Lucca we will arrive to San Giovanni Valdarno, the town, where in famous painter MASACCIO, the initiator of the Renaissance, was born. His paternal house is in the main street of the town. In the year 1426, he had created in Pisa (not far from here) a polyptych for the chapel of S. Maria del Carmine http://www.turismo.pisa.it/en/culture/dettaglio/Chiesa-di- Santa-Maria-del-Carmine/ His first painting is a polyptych “Madonna and Child throne between two angels”, which is on display in the church of San Giovenale in Cascia (Reggello, Florence). Http://www.caivaldarnosuperiore.it/la-chiesa-di-san-giovenale-a-cascia-reggello/ In Florence, you can also visit the famous Brancacci Chapel http://museicivicifiorentini.comune.fi.it/Brancacci/ and admire his most significant work.

200 km in 2 hours and half by car – starting in Cortona until Rome – where the poet AMELIA ROSSELLI died in 1996. She grew up as in France, England and the United States, but in 1949 she arrived to Italy, settling down in Rome. This musician, poet and translator was the author of eight poetry collections. Locomotrix, a selected bilingual edition of her poem and prose (Italian and English version), was published in 2012.

From Rome, moving to the south, after 865 km (9 hours and a half by car) we will arrive in Arenella (Naples), where the painter SALVATOR ROSA was born in 1615. At the age 17, he started his pictorial profession, painting on small raw real life scenes in his grandfather’s shop. Turning north we can visit the Estense Gallery in Modena http://www.gallerie-estensi.beniculturali.it/galleria-estense/ to admire “Erminia and Tancredi”, his beautiful painting made around 1640.

The intellectual property of the images that appear in this blog correspond to their authors. The sole purpose of this site, is to spread the knowledge of these artists and that other people enjoy their works. To pursue this issue, you can digit: http://meetingbenches.com/2017/06/discovering-italian-creativity-2145-km-amazement-italian-sky/