Published by successful books and currently available in the main online bookstores and platforms, “Looks and battles. The art criticism in the essays of “Mercury”(Curated by Arnaldo Colasanti – Note by Onofrio Nuzzolese pp.180, October 2024, Euro 20.00) It is a volume that offers a rare and little known look at Toti Scialoja, refined intellectual and great protagonist of the abstract painting of the twentieth century. The volume published by successful books represents a real journey into the art critic of a master of abstractionism.
Curated by Arnaldo Colasanti, with the notes of Onofrio Nuzzolese, the book collects the critical writings that Scialoja published on “Mercurio”, the famous monthly founded by Alba de Céspendes in the years immediately following the liberation. Here is the composition of the book.
Index
Introduction
The critical notebook on the knees by Arnaldo Colasanti
Looks and battles
Twenty years of fascist art
Art and barbarism
Carrà and De Chirico
In death of Chaïm Soutine
Is realism renunciation?
Dance-pit
French with the naked eye
In death of Pierre Bonnard
Mafai 1947
Seventy Chagall in Paris
Before establishing himself as a painter and poet, Scialoja was an acute observer of the Italian and international artistic panorama. Through the pages of the magazine, exhibitions exhibitions, he rediscovered forgotten masters and traced the lines of a new artistic sensitivity, marking a crucial passage from traditional figuration to abstraction. His texts, vibrant and enthusiasts, tell the urgency of an art capable of dialogue with historical reality, between innovative impetus and the comparison with the past.
In the selected writings, in particular, Scialoja confronts the great themes of the art of his time, wondering about the effects that twenty years of dictatorship have had on creativity and the relationship between art and power. Analyze the concept of realism, asking questions about its function and the limits of the representation, and reflects on the link between artistic and destruction expression, investigating how barbarism can influence or even generate new forms of visual language. Through the story of important artists, both Italian and international, it also highlights the tensions between tradition and innovation, exploring the evolutions of painting and the dialogue between avant -garde and memory. His gaze then rests on key figures of modernity, restoring his poetics and the impact in the artistic panorama. In these pages his interest in the relationship between movement and pictorial form also emerges, a sensitivity that will accompany him throughout his career. The volume thus proves to be an extraordinary testimony of the post -war cultural fervor, tracing a portrait of an era in transformation and an artist who, even before the painter, was a careful observer in the world.
A precious work for scholars, art enthusiasts and curious readers, which returns the liveliness of a historical period in which Italian culture tried to redefine itself in an international context.
Succeeds books, born from the cultural factory Succeeds and directed by Nicola Fano, Gloria Piccioni and Rossella Baldi, stands out for his dedication to Author non -fictionwith the aim of rediscovering and reinterpreting the past to understand the present. In a few years, the publishing house has already published over twenty works, ranging from literary and theatrical criticism to the history of art and sport.
Among the protagonists of the catalog we find authors such as Leone Piccioni, Geno Pampaloni and Carlo Bo, but also rare works of Bernini, Gramsci and Savinio. In art criticism, studies on Morandi and Montale di Marilena Pasquali and a volume dedicated to the Preraffaellita Burne-Jones of Laura Falqui stand out. There is no lack of interest in sport and journalism: among the titles, unpublished reportage of Sandro Oonofri and the historic interview with Alexander Dubček by Renzo Foa.
With a distribution edited by Auditibri Diffusione and Terminal Distribution, the books of successful books are available in both selected bookstores and online, in two high quality formats. The publishing house proposes itself as a laboratory of ideas and dialogue, combining tradition and innovation to deal with the complexity of the contemporary world.
Carlo Franza