Thanks to the renewed dialogue between Artissima and UNA Esperienze, a brand of Gruppo UNA, the ballroom of the historic hotel Principi di Piemonte | UNA Esperienze in the centre of Torino will hosted, for the fourth time in collaboration with Artissima, a contemporary art exhibition titled Perché non Lilloni?, curated this year by Massimo Minini and his namesake gallery in Brescia.
For the 50th anniversary of Galleria Massimo Minini, the project orchestrated a plot twist that draws attention to Umberto Lilloni (1898- 1980), seen by Massimo Minini as “a mysterious, metaphysical artist, a Morandi of the forest rather than the trees, creator of vases with cut flowers, landscapes of northern cities such as Stockholm, portraits, maidens…”.
The 20 paintings by the Milanese artist, carefully selected by Massimo Minini for the show, pay homage to a painter of the figurative and chiarista tradition, granting space to an overview on equal footing of the representatives of various artistic worlds alternating in conflict across the entire 20th century. While this century had the merit of widening the cognitive boundaries of art and science, it also bore the stigma of having put an end to a world and a way of making art that had existed for thousands of years of human history. The project is thus an arena of confrontation and debate regarding the artistic relationship between avant-garde and traditionalism – always one of the most controversial battlefields of art – which from the expertise of historians and critics reached the sensibilities of the general public, determining tastes, personal orientations and lifestyles.
