Exhibition at Villa Medici in Rome: modernity in a Renaissance palace
Unusual exhibition at the Villa Medici with the exhibition of plastic or musical works of the 16 residents who have just spent a year in this sublime building in the heart of Rome.
Contrary to popular belief, the Académie de France in Rome does not only welcome sculptors and painters. The 16 boarders who have just spent a year at Villa Medici are proof of this: there are composers, architects, photographers, historians or writers, a fashion designer, and only one painter! They have just spent a year in this sublime building that dominates the city and presents their work in a breathtaking exhibition.
Their modernity blends perfectly with this 16th century Renaissance palace.
During the confinement, Mikel Urquiza imagined these newspaper sculptures that inexorably turn with immense lightness to evoke everyday life. Sara Vitacca researched in the archives of the Villa the year 1837, where the residents had been confined because of cholera and retraces with paintings of their portraits painted at the time, life in the institution this year.
Confinement with Louise Sartor painter who does not like life in society and who painted on a tablet what she saw from her window of the Académie de France in Rome. Others passed the today's news like the composer Bastien David who completed the production of his new instrument. It is a metallophone who has the particularity of having keys in the 12th tone which musically allows for incredible nuances. Or François Olislaeger, cartoonist and comic-book author, went to the island of Stromboli to see the volcano and expresses on four large canvasses the symbolism of this lava, which makes this lava spring outwards that comes from within. In short, a beautiful journey through time.
Two residents of the Villa Medici explain their work to us
During their stay at the Académie de France in Rome, the residents produced a work. Here are two: that of François Olislaeger, cartoonist and author of comics, and that of composer Bastien David.
Figaro Culture - https://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/villa-medici-a-rome-la-modernite-dans-un-palais-renaissance-20200809
