ICONE - 7.24 x 0.26 GALLERY

TEXTS BY: Gemma Brandi, Pier Giuseppe Moroni
PRESENTATION BY: Grazia Neri
PUBLISHER: Electa
PAGES: 144
ILLUSTRATIONS: 88
PRICE: 35 €
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2008
IN BOOKSHOPS: May
 
Electa is pleased to present an album of photographs representing the final act in an exhibition cycle initiated in 2005 and relating to four extraordinary women and exceptional actresses: Virna Lisi, Silvana Mangano, Alida Valli and Monica Vitti.
Pier Giuseppe Moroni, curator and proprietor of the exhibition space, chose four very different figures, emblems of professionalism and a beauty free of the usual stereotypes, women capable of challenging and redefining consolidated aesthetic canons, women of an all-embracing, sensual and disarming appeal.

The choice of the exhibition location may appear unusual, the gallery installed in a commercial space defined by Grazia Neri as "contemporary and modern in the heart of Milan". She continues in her introduction to the book: "Photography needs support, help and celebration if it is to remain vital and in existence with its vast archives and its fantastic new output".

The presentation of the photographs was configured so as to evoke the daily rituals of the professional photographers examining slides on a backlit viewer with a magnifying glass.
The exhibition surface is, in fact, composed of a skilfully illuminated transparent light box of unusual dimensions: just 26 centimetres high, it extends for a length of over seven metres.
The photos are viewed in sequence, scanned with a ferocious rhythm capable of abducting and seducing with its images of wonderful women; women of character, aware of their own talent, capable of suffering and caressed by a pain that fails to undermine the strength of their will to live and communicate.

Icons offers access to the world of four Italian women who have proved capable of sublimating their personal torments in peerless interpretations, who have never lost their smiles even when they took on a bitter turn; exemplary and radiant women, elegant and complex, who become emblems and symbols of the entire feminine universe; ladies of the stage able to satisfy the senses and the spirit, icons of an intensely human, timeless sacrality.

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