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- Frida in ‘The Artist's Portrait. In the mirror of Narcissus. The face, the mask, the selfie"
Frida in ‘The Artist's Portrait. In the mirror of Narcissus. The face, the mask, the selfie"
15 August 2024
‘The Artist's Portrait. In the mirror of Narcissus. The face, the mask, the selfie’ is the theme of the exhibition proposed by the Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì that will take place in the spaces of the Museo Civico San Domenico from 22 February to 29 June 2025. To celebrate the 20th exhibition, the curator of the Foundation's major exhibitions Gianfranco Brunelli has decided to investigate the meaning that depicting one's own face has had for artists of all times.
"The two Fridas" by Frida Kahlo will be one of over 300 works from major Italian and foreign museums that will be exhibited at the San Domenico Museum.
From antiquity to the 20th century, the self-portrait is the sublime reminder of the ancient myth of Narcissus, narrated by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. From Ovid's hexameters, the mosaics of Antioch, the ochre walls of Pompeii, through Caravaggio's shadow and Turner's light, to Bill Viola's reflections, the mirroring of Narcissus is the artist's self-regeneration. From being an instrumental object, the mirror becomes reflection, symbol and metaphor, but also the only possibility of self-representation up to the photographic self-shot.
‘The next exhibition we are dedicating to the portrait of the artist in the mirror of Narcissus, to the self-portrait, which is not, as in the collective imagination, the figure of men against a dark background, but is the journey of the entire history of art. So it is an exhibition of exhibitions,' says Gianfranco Brunelli.
The works will include Jan van Eyck with his Man with a Turban; Jan Gossaert with Venus in the Mirror; De Chirico and the Self-Portrait with Bust of Euripides. There will also be works by Francisco Goya, Magritte, Severini and Vincent van Gogh. By the latter it will be possible to admire ‘Paul Gauguin's Chair’. In the gallery of this exhibition there will be no lack of attention to female protagonism. Among the artists chosen, to name but one, Frida Kahlo. ‘We will try to have the artists and above all the major protagonists,’ Brunelli concludes. Not only painting, but also sculpture and historical documents'.
