THE EXHIBITION BY WALTER GUADAGNINI
The fifteenth-century spaces of Da Mosto Palace in Reggio Emilia host, from 7 th December 2024 to 2 nd March 2025, the Encantadas exhibition of Davide Benati, that recalls a quinquagenary artistic adventure at this point through a selection of historical works and many unpublished works, proof of a constant research, that is firmly anchored to the eighties and now continues with renovated passion and determination.
After the exhibitions in Public Museums (1992) and in Magnani Palace (2003), the artist will go back to show in his hometown with a new project, curated by Walter Guadagnini and promoted by Magnani Palace Foundation. The solo exhibit deduces the title – Encantadas – from the homonymous painting series, made in the latest years.
DAVIDE BENATI’S WORDS
“I chose works from different periods of my story for the Da Mosto Palace. Many have been painted in my new studio in town,
others come from loans of public and private collections, never exhibited or exhibited a long time ago in Italian and foreign galleries as well. They are all of large size, conformed to majestic spaces and full of the palace charm.)
THE ARTIST’S IDENTITY
The exhibition curator Walter Guadagnini, in the essay of the catalogue, traces the essential elements of artist’s poetics that, from the beginning to maturity, define the visual identity: “the use of watercolour how technical preferred painting; the choice to paint on Nepali paper; the pictures identification belonging to a personal and collective memory together, brought back and revisited but like almost unrecognisable fragments, at the abstraction limits.
A painting where everything can return on itself, but every time in a different dimension, because the artist's presence is more if it is more masked from the illusory objectivity.
DA MOSTO PALACE
The solo show in Da Mosto Palace opens with production of the early eighties that gave notoriety to Benati, constituting the basic foundation for the consecutive work: watercolours of large format on Nepali paper of refined sensitivity, heavenly pictures that connect East and West, dream and reality.
The exhibition will present, additionally, a choice of works made between the nineties and the beginning of the new millennium: great works where the diptych and triptych practice establishes itself as primary.
THE WORKS
The itinerary, composed of about fifty works from public and private collections and from the artist’s studio, will conclude with a series of never seen large triptychs, that will prove the continuity of Benati’s inspiration and his incredible use of light and colour.
Some compositions of travel cards and diaries complete the exhibition, in part shown at Rimini Biennial Design in 2024: private notes where in few centimetres far from paper, in few drops of watercolour, in few pencils signs the studies will summarise for great paintings on display. The fair will be accompanied with a catalogue edited by Dario Cimorelli Editor with an unpublished text of Walter Guadagnini, a critical anthology with textual contributions of Roberto Sanesi, Arturo
Carlo Quintavalle, Massimo Cacciari, Lea Vergine, Antonio Tabucchi, Elena Pontiggia, Fabrizio D’Amico, Antonio Tabucchi, Massimo Pulini, Francesco Tedeschi, Marco Tonelli, Sandro Parmiggiani, Mario Bertoni and Eleonora Frattarolo and documents of exhibited works.
Information
Opening times: Thursday and Friday 10am-1pm and 3pm-7pm, Saturday Sunday and non-working days 10am-7pm, special openings on 26 th December, 2 nd and 6 th January 10am-7pm, 1 st January 3pm-7pm, closed on 25 th December; last entrance an hour before closure. For information: palazzomagnani.