“(..) tossed like a cuttlefish bone by the waves, gradually disappear, become a wrinkled tree or a stone smoothed by the sea, blend into the colours of the sunsets, disappear.” (Cuttlefish bones(Eugenio Montale)
The FAI – Italian Environment Fund ETSin collaboration with the Ugo Mulas Archivehosts, at the Abbey of San Fruttuoso in Camogli (GE), the exhibition Cuttlefish bones. Ugo Mulas, Eugenio Montalean intense and evocative dialogue between two artistic languages, photography and poetry, and between two great masters of Italian culture, Ugo Mulas and Eugenio Montale, which focuses on the same subject: the impression and the concept of the Ligurian landscape. The exhibition can be visited until February 16, 2025.
By Guido Risicato and IL FAI would like to thank the Montale Family and Casa Editrice Mondadori SpA Milano for having granted free permission to reproduce, in the exhibition layout and in the promotional materials, some lyrics taken from “Ossi di Seppia” by Eugenio Montale.
The FAI thanks the Golfo Paradiso Maritime Transports., the exhibition, set up in various rooms of the Abbeypresents twenty-five black and white photographs taken by Ugo Mulas in 1962 in Monterosso, in the Cinque Terre, the place where Eugenio Montale spent his childhood and which inspired the poet in the composition of the collection Cuttlefish bones.
The photos expressin a conceptual way, the landscape described by the poet in what he himself defined as the “proto-Montale” period, that is, 1925 when he published one of his first collections, Bones of 
seppia precisely, where his harsh and stony language already showed the dark side of the human condition. Always fascinated by those verses, Ugo Mulas decides to illustrate the Raccolta for a magazine and goes to Monterosso with the aim of rendering on the plate that feeling, both of absolute and profound solitude, represented by the sea, the sun and the rocks.More than these documentary photos that can also be interesting, what is important to convey is the general climate of the place, that is, to find those generic, non-specific elements that continually return, like a leitmotif throughout the book” writes Ugo Mulas regarding his reportage. The result is a photographic work characterized by the choice of unusual points of view and by an intense lyricism completely
adhering to the poet’s work, where the word finds a perfect correspondence with the image. For Stefano Verdino, professor of Italian literature at the University of Genoa, “the qualities of both the framing and the light of these shots have something peremptory, which fits admirably not in illustrative terms but in expressive harmony with the always clear and sharp verse of this first Montale”.
After the exhibition, in 2023, of Gianni Berengo Gardin’s photographs dedicated to the village of San Fruttuoso, the FAI welcomes a second initiative dedicated to authorial photography, showcasing the shots of another great Master, also dedicated to this stretch of the Ligurian landscape. The intention of the Foundation is offer the opportunity to get to know this special work by Ugo Mulas, which is articulated in the suggestive dialogue with the poems of Eugenio Montale, but also Of invite the 
public, through these artistic visions, to carefully observe the landscape, to discover it and know it in depth and in the details, to discover its value and meaning, its history and spirit, which go beyond the postcard beauty for which it is renowned throughout the world. In this too, the FAI pursues its mission, educating people to know the places as the first and fundamental step for
to promote, among the citizens of today and tomorrow, a culture of protection and respect for heritage.
Ugo Mulas was born in Pozzolengo (BS) in 1928. After high school, he moved to Milan in 1948 to study law, which he never completed. In the early 1950s, he frequented the Jamaica bar, a meeting place for intellectuals and artists. Post-war Milan, its outskirts, the Jamaica bar and the waiting rooms of the Central Station were the subjects of the author’s first photographs, which were published in 1955. The 1954 Venice Biennale marked the beginning of his career as a photographer. During a tour in Moscow with the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, he produced an independent reportage on Russia in 1960. His collaboration with Giorgio Strehler led him to develop a particular method of documenting the theatre scene. In 1962, in addition to the production of “Ossi di seppia”, he documented the fifth Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto and here he met David Smith and Alexander Calder with whom he would later collaborate on fashion features. At the end of the 1960s he followed the most important artistic events: in Foligno “Lo spazio dell’immagine”, the 1968 protests at the Milan Triennale, at the Venice Biennale and in Kassel for “Documenta”. In the 1970s he intensified his research for the “Verifiche”: a set of fourteen works, structured in images and texts; a work aimed at defining photographic material and its technical, linguistic and ethical codes. In 1972, with his friend and art historian Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, he curated an exhibition of his work. He died in Milan in his home studio on 2 March 1973. In May of the same year, the first retrospective dedicated to him was inaugurated in Parma, at the Palazzo della Pilotta, entitled Ugo Mulas. Images and texts. In the same year Einaudi published “La fotografia”, a volume in which Ugo Mulas provides the fundamental tools for understanding his work.
Carlo Franza