Capri and the word landscape have always been an almost perfect couple. However, in 1922, Edwin Cerio, mayor of the island of the Gulf of Naples, strongly wanted to give a different direction from the tourist idea typical of that place. To succeed, he organized a conference on the landscape, inviting artists and intellectuals (such as he was) to redefine a new and unprecedented interpretation of the Capri landscape. The first edition of the Landscape Festival, now underway in Anacapri until the end of September, starts from those traditions, with a widespread path of exhibitions and events conceived in various locations, curated by Gianluca Riccio and Arianna Rosica.
PICTURES
The intention is to dedicate each year an in-depth study to an artist who had a fundamental role with Capri. It then begins with Luigi Ghirri (1943 – 1992), protagonist of a personal exhibition at the Red House Museum. 24 photographs of Ghirri are exhibited, selected from those he took in Capri between 1981 and 1983. It is difficult to think of the great photographer from Reggio Emilia with his lens on a coast other than that of Marina di Ravenna, a place that he most immortalized times and with one of the most famous shots in 1986, from the series “The Profile of the Clouds” within the work “Italian Landscape” that he made between 1980 and 1992.
Ghirri’s Capri photos should also be read as part of his mapping of the environment and landscape: his unmistakable gaze is found in these shots (especially when he rests on “urban” details such as a house number on a white lime wall), almost more from semiologist to professional artist and photographer, categories that both suited him narrow.
In the Red House there is also “Passaggi”, an exhibition that collects works by nineteenth-century landscape architects alongside the works of some contemporary artists – Baruchello, Sandro Chia, Gianluca Di Pasquale, Goldschmied & Chiari, Angelo Mosca, Ettore Spalletti, Michele Tocca – who participated in a residency and workshop program with high school students in Capri and Anacapri.
Among the artists in residence, last May, there were also Stefano Arienti and Liliana Moro, who confronted the nature, history and architecture of the island and then created two installations site specific visible today with Open, an exhibition in progress at Villa San Michele.
Useful info
Landscape Festival
www.festivaldelpaesaggio.com
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