Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano e Comune di Milano presents
Ugo La Pietra
IL NATURALE DA RITROVARE
disegni sugli scritti di Eleonora Fiorani
curated by Maria Fratelli
Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano, 9 July – 13 September 2020
From 9 July to 13 September 2020 the Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano hosts the exhibition “Il naturale da ritrovare”, which is part of the rich exhibition calendar of the house museum for this summer and is included in the summer schedule of the Municipality of Milan “Aria di cultura “. The exhibition, set up in the spaces of the former ceramic school and curated by the director Maria Fratelli, is a two-way dialogue: on the one hand the drawings of Ugo La Pietra, Italian architect, designer and artist or, as he calls himself, “researcher in the visual arts “; on the other, the texts by Eleonora Fiorani, epistemologist and essayist, professor at the Politecnico di Milano. In fact, twenty-two unpublished graphic works by Ugo La Pietra are exhibited, created specifically during the recent lockdown as an interpretation of a section of the volume by Eleonora Fiorani, also unpublished, Il naturale da ritrovare, dedicated to animals and the ancient relationship that binds us to them. It is a complex relationship, analyzed from multiple points of view as the author comments: «The animal world has always been a place evoking daytime and nighttime dreams and nightmares and a place full of charm and mystery for the fictional. The bestiaries belong to the sacred territory in an imaginary populated with real and fantastic animals. The animal is in fact for man a sort of a mirror and alter ego, in which to project vices and virtues and human characteristics, a way of exorcising or finding one’s own animality, while also opening up to the presence of the other and his gaze and invites us to new ways of being and thinking about the world and new behaviors, those of respectful friendship between men, plants and animals ». Ugo La Pietra’s illustrations, made in ink, pencil and watercolors, range from prehistory to the contemporary world up to Banksy, tracing with a touch of irony a story of animals which for man are from time to time enemies, companions, victims, in an unstable balance, as emerges from the texts that will be fully exhibited together with the drawings in the exhibition itinerary. For some chapters (such as the one dedicated to “Maternaggio”) the artist also proposes more than one subject. As Eleonora Fiorani says, “ironic, tender, scratchy the designs of Ugo La Pietra give us back the presence and gaze of the animal in an extraordinary encounter between the language of the word and that of the image-sign”.
The exhibition “Il naturale da ritrovare” also represents the outcome of a journey, which always started during the months of the lockdown, of approaching the public and expanding the cultural offer of Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano through the use of social channels. The first section of Eleonora Fiorani’s volume, dedicated to gardens, has already been published in digital format and made available in installments on instagram and facebook from April to June. The same path will also be followed for this second section, and the publication of the entire illustrated volume is under construction. A circle closes and the return to normal use of our places of culture is closed through the paper book and the virtual exhibition.
Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano
Ex “Jan 15” ceramic school
9 July – 13 September 2020 Thursday and Friday 11.00-18.00 (last admission 17.30)
free admission
Via Jan 15, 20129 Milano
tel: 02 88463736
email: c.casaboschi@comune.milano.it
facebook/instagram: @CasaBoschiDiStefano