Festa della Liberazione Italia

Dear Art Lover,

     My friend Ale popped onto Facebook chat this morning to say hello.  It went like this:

Alessandro:  Buon giorno!

Kelly Borsheim:    ciao! Come stai e buona .. FESTA???

Alessandro:  bene,oggi è il giorno degli americani!

Kelly Borsheim:  cosa? pensavo partigiani.

Alessandro :  senza i soldati americani sarebbe stato impossibile! anche se i partigiani si prendono quasi tutti i meriti......

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Which all means:

Alessandro: Good morning!
Kelly Borsheim: hello! How are you and happy .. HOLIDAY ???
Alessandro: Well, today is the day of the Americans!
Kelly Borsheim: What? I thought [Italian] partisans.
Alessandro: Without the American soldiers, it would have been impossible!  Although the partisans take almost all the credit ......

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Orsan Michele, Florence, Italy circa 1944

     My 93-year-old friend Renato in Casignano (where I go to help with the olive harvest each Novembre) told me the first time he met me that he was just a boy when the American soldiers came to live in his home.  They made quite an impression on him… polite and friendly people, he said.  He also had the opinion that the Americans saved the Italians and I seemed to earn immediate bonus points with him, even though I could not have possibly had any connection to events of World War II.  Casignano is in the hills outside of Florence.

     Also on Facebook I got lost in looking at tons of images of Hitler and Mussolini’s visit to the Renaissance City, as well and the hideous scenes of the city after the bombing.  The images come from an album on the FB Page: titled Firenzepoco conosciuta  [The lesser known Florence]. 

     This first is an image of Orsan Michele, not far at all from where I used to street paint in Florence.  The Florentines moved most paintings and other portable artworks and valuables outside of the city and often into the hill country surrounding the city.  But for fresco and larger works, they built walls of sandbags and sometimes brick (as for the original ‘David’ by Michelangelo in the Accademia).  Granted if the art took a direct hit, it would be gone, but they were mostly trying to protect from shrapnel.

     This second is a gorgeous photo with the light and composition, but what a horror!  Hitler ordered some Florentine Jews rounded up, about 300, and sent to Auschwitz.  Only 107 of these people were deemed “good enough” for the camps.  The rest were killed right away.  In the end, only 8 women and 7 men survived the camps.

Florentine Jews rounded up and sent to Auschwitz

Bombs along the Lungarno Archibusieri

 

     This third is an image of the bombs set up under the Lungarno Archibusieri, beneath the famous Vasari Corridor and beside the Ponte Vecchio.  The caption says this was August 1944, but the bombs were never detonated.  Still, what a sight.. and sadly, there are so many much more terrible!

 

     This last I share with you today from this historical album first struck me for its beauty.  The light on the ruin of Borgo San Jacopo is striking in its shape and contrast with the surrounding city.  But, oh, such loss!  Borgo San Jacopo has been rebuilt and you might never notice how ravished it once was.

Borgo San Jacopo Bombed During WWII - Florence, Italy

Here is a good explanation and other context for 25 April 1945 and what it means to many Italians.

http://www.iodonna.it/attualita/appuntamenti-ed-eventi/2016/04/24/25-aprile-ecco-perche-e-festa-della-liberazione/?refresh_ce-cp

Google Translate does a good enough job on this article for you to understand it.

https://translate.google.it

     Also, I shared an album of war-torn Florence on my Facebook page.  The album comes from a page titled “Firenze poco conosciuta”  [The lesser known Florence].  Find them here:

https://www.facebook.com/firenzepococonosciuta/?pnref=story

So, happy Liberation Day, Italia!

Peace,

Kelly Borsheim, artist

http://BorsheimArts.com

Castles in the Air

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I find it amusing to learn which modo di dire or expressions are common between countries and cultures, compared to what is not even translatable. Here in Firenze, Italia, I find myself having friends not only from Italy and America, but also from many other countries as well. One of my dearest friends, Caroline, is a Brit. She called me on New Year’s Day (and thankfully on this particular morn, not before noon!) and invited me to meet her and our Italian friend Doria at Palazzo Strozzi. We went to see the exhibit "The Thirties. The Arts in Italy Beyond Fascism".

It was more interesting than I expected it to be and I am not even sure how to explain what my expectations were other than I did not really have much of any. Like the Frances Bacon exhibit in the side gallery Strozzina, I had been riding the fence about whether or not I wanted to bother (I have not on the latter). I like to see art of all kinds, but I have a strong drive now to do my own thing.

I was amused because Doria and Caroline decided to share an audio guide, each taking one fork of the earplug microphones, in the same way that the kids share sounds on an iPod. They found themselves often being pulled back towards the other as their interests diverged, like a leash that kept them hostage. I rarely bother with the audio guides. Granted, they serve to give someone(s) a job, but much of talk seems like rubbish to me, or information that might be interesting, but omits what I really wanted to know about a work of art. I was able to roam about more freely.

I find that I really enjoy going to museums and exhibits in a foreign country in which English is a strong second language. I could have stayed longer at the Strozzi that day because I find it interesting how the Italian is reconfigured into English. It is a great way to learn a new language as well as appreciate anew the subtle beauties in one’s own. And so I languished among the artworks that I mostly felt little connection with, until Caroline psssstted me over to see one she thought I needed to see.

Once I arrived at her side, it was obvious why. She pointed and said, “Look at the title!” This painting (shown below) by Osvaldo Licini in 1936 is titled “Castello in Aria” (Castle in the Air). It is one of our running – and affectionate – jokes between ourselves: my ability to build many “castles in the air” (envisioned improbabilities) from one phrase, sometimes even one word (Hello?), uttered by another. What DOES it all mean? Ahhaha … Doria confirmed that not only do I do this, but Italia has the same expression. [Or as my former husband use to say, “Kelly, you could ‘What if’ me to death!”]

An exciting perk about attending group exhibits is to discover an artist that you would like to learn more about. In this mostra about the 1930s art in Italy, the one who struck my curiosity most was next to the Castle. It was a painting by Tullio Crali. Not only, like my father, was the artist an avid pilot, but his art uses mathematics in a beautiful and creative way and I was hooked! Crali’s work in this exhibit at the Palazzo Strozzi was titled “Horizontal Spin” and is shown here.

I found that my favorite part of the exhibit was the collexion of side posts that contained memories of people from that time period. The world was changing so dramatically and so quickly. The black and white hands drew me in (each panel had a different image of hands) and I read quotes such as this one:

“When Hitler came to Florence I was sent off with the Avanguardisti from heaven knows where, but still, all that orchestration was impressive. Yes, the city had been heavily “made up” for the event. You still couldn’t feel it, we only realised afterwards . . . And all this showing off, there was this business with the aeroplanes, you never knew how many were flying by; it seemed like a hundred, but it was only one flying by a hundred times. It was all about hiding things which there was nothing to be ashamed of.” ~ Lapo Mazzoi (Firenze 1925)

And this one:

“It was a crystal set, or cat’s whisker receiver, which as a very odd-looking little instrument containing a pin that was moved on a stone—it was a galvanic stone—and it managed to set up a contact with radio broadcasts. So the movement of the pin on the stone made it possible to intercept radio broadcasts, which you listened to through headphones connected to this little machine. It was technologically fascinating for those days. And then of course there were the radios, which were far simpler.
But the idea was that we could partly build them ourselves, using small parts. It was lots of fun.” ~ Franco de Peverelli Luschi (Firenze 1928)

It was interesting to note that various prestigious artistic awards of this time and place (such as the Bergamo Award and various Biennale) were caught up in politics. Perhaps not unlike today, but since that world of high-end contemporary art is still so foreign to me, I hate to comment on it. I found myself revisiting the chicken-and-egg question of whether art imitates life or life imitates art. We are all a product of our times and there are so many things happening at once that I doubt we individually have much control over what influences us. For example, in my world, it seems that there is a growing interest in “realistic” art (not even sure what that means since I see everything as relative and interconnected). Can we artists help this? Should we rebel or embrace? Should we consciously worry about these things or should we just move ahead, creating art in whatever means we are inspired to do? I am inclined to think that latter – that even if we try to remain spontaneous, we will inevitably record some part of the times we live in. That is not a bad thing, in fact, is perhaps what we are intended to do!

Links of interest :

• Palazzo Strozzi: The Thirties. The Arts in Italy Beyond Fascism The site is actually pretty cool and you can get a good idea of what the exhibit was intending to demonstrate. Click here… then click on ‘English’ in the top left corner. Then on the right column, click on ‘Exhibition Walkthrough’ and scroll to your heart’s content.
• Live with Art: blog post by Nora Buñuel about this Strozzi exhibit