The Reggia di Colorno, on the thirtieth anniversary of his death, is offering, from 5 October 2024 to 12 January 2025, a monographic exhibition dedicated to the portraits of Carlo Mattioli (Modena 1911 – Parma 1994). Cesare Garboli had acutely captured the essence of these paintings: “Mattioli’s portraits are (…) lightning-fast introspections, ‘critical essays’ that invest the psychology (in its totality) and the secret of a person, the contradiction that makes him exist”.
The exhibition coordinated by Antonella Balestrazzi, curated by Sandro Parmiggiani and Anna Zaniboni Mattioli, the artist’s granddaughter and curator of the Carlo Mattioli Archive and Foundation, brings together about sixty works by the Maestro. The exhibition opens with sixteen portraits of historic Colorno figures preserved in the Sala del Consiglio Comunale and commissioned to the artist in 1963 by Augusta Ghidiglia Quintavalle, art historian and Superintendent of the Galleries of Parma. This corpus moves openly on the edge of irony. Some of them play on an amused transposition of faces: Ottobono Terzi becomes the poet Attilio Bertolucci, the philosopher Zaccaria Olivieri, the painter Carlo Carrà and the bishop Martino da Colorno, the reigning pope John XXIII.
The exhibition continues with a long sequence of portraits that progressively approach the artist’s intimacy: intellectuals, poets, artists he frequented and esteemed at the time of the “Officina Parmigiana” up to his most famous colleagues (Renato Guttuso, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio Morandi, Giorgio De Chirico, Ottone Rosai, Giacomo Manzù). The most heartfelt and private nucleus closes the sequence with family portraits (his wife Lina, his daughter Marcella, his beloved granddaughter Anna, depicted at various stages of life, from childhood to adolescence) and self-portraits. The works come from museums and public institutions and from private collections.
“The portraits made by Carlo Mattioli testify to the value and charm of the artist’s painting: works in which the drawing sprouts, with memorable solutions, always aimed at capturing the truth of a face and a body, with a look of affectionate irony that does not hesitate to push into the territories of the revelation of the intimate truth of the person. Let us think of the discomfort, the existential desperation of Rosai, with his hands like claws, like prostheses aimed at grasping something that always eludes, of the solitude of Morandi, depicted as a sort of inaccessible sphinx, of the ambiguity of Guttuso, alluded to by the curls of smoke from his cigarette”, highlights Sandro Parmiggiani.
Carlo Mattioli, one of the most important painters and designers of the last century, has tackled many themes: Parma, his city, still life, landscape, torment and reflection as in the Aigues Mortesthe skies, the illustration of texts masterpieces of world literature. Mattioli’s portraits are appreciated by fans of his painting and scholars of twentieth-century art among the highest results of his activity, in the exasperated features of the faces and the posture of the bodies, in a latent, sometimes irreverent, irony”.
The splendor of the Reggia di Colorno is the venue for the exhibition. In the heart of Emilian history, the Reggia is a fascinating synthesis of stories and styles: what is presented to the eyes of the visitor today bears the signs of projects, works, and dynasties that have followed one another over the centuries and with varying fortunes. Within the walls of the noble residence that was home to the Farnese, the Bourbons, and Maria Luisa of Austria, Napoleon’s second wife, lies the essence of opulence and refined French taste. The large state rooms on the main floor, furnished with precious eighteenth-century furniture and adorned with polychrome marble floors, stuccoes, and frescoes from various eras, offer more than one reason to appreciate the luxury of the Colorno court. The monumental complex is complemented by the large ducal chapel of San Liborio which represents a rare example of perfect integration between architectural structure, ornamentation and furnishings (thanks to its construction over the course of a few years and the absence of significant transformations) and the Historic garden (created at the beginning of the 18th century as an interesting combination of the most peculiar characteristics of the Italian garden and the French garden) and recently restored, described by travellers of the time as a “place of delight and wonder”. The exhibition is organized by Antea Progetti e servizi per la cultura e il turismo with the collaboration of the Province of Parma and the Municipality of Colorno.
Carlo Franza