Valter Sambucini and Placido Scandurra - photos, watercolors and engravings inspired by the sea of this historic beach that has experienced much; from the legendary landing of Aeneas to the American landing in '44, finally evocative territory of films and historical celebrations.
Legend tells of the Trojan hero Aeneas who, having escaped together with his father Anchises and his young son Ascanius from the destruction of his city by the Greeks, landed after long navigation, on the coast of central Italy at the ancient Lavinium or Lido di Enea. Although recent archaeological excavations, conducted from 1957 onwards by the University of Rome, have established that it was instead the Borgo di Pratica di Mare, where the acropolis of the ancient Latin city would have risen, costume films, of the Peplum genre, have been filmed in Lavinio in the Tor Caldara locality, still a thriving regional nature reserve. In fact, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the massive investment of U.S. capital started this reenactment epic in Italy as well. Crisscrossing and syncretic plots, creative co-presences of myths and heroes, gave this strand a fair amount of public approval.
The Italians of our disastrous postwar period, had a great need to dream of mighty paladins: Hercules, Maciste, Ursus, Spartacus, but also to stage their own cultural revenge on the liberating Americans, using among other things our true heroes of the time, the best actors of Italian theater. Mario Feliciani, Arnoldo Foà, Enrico Maria Salerno, Gianni Santuccio, Mario Scaccia, Alberto Lupo, thus went on to play exasperating and cruel anti-heroes, somehow parodying the Nazis who had recently humiliated and tormented Rome.
Artists Placido Scandurra and Valter Sambucini lived on these beaches, independently of each other, with splendid vacations and emotions that they communicated through their works.
Valter Sambucini photographed the annual historical re-enactments of the American landing of January 22, 1944, photos that look vintage as the characters retrieved uniforms and armaments from the Anzio Landing Museum via Villa Adele, but also the sea itself as freedom and water as a soothing of all ills. His photos in fact capture the refractions of presences, like ghosts emerging from pools of water on the beach after the first autumn rain or the last spring downpour; elderly couples strolling, isolated umbrellas crossed by the sun, colorful vibrations of houses that, reflected in the water, look like sandcastles.
Placido Scandurra presents some watercolors and etchings from 1986 but also from earlier years in which he worked on the series The “Bathers.” They are the anti-heroes of “Free Beach” or the figurines of “Pastorals” inspired by Greek/Roman mythology, with centaurs and warriors, from 1978 and in the following years. They represent the decomposed festival of the humble, the losers without social redemption, who have become increasingly hysterical and rabid, but consenting, a fragile mass but one that confronts and infects each other among their peers, threatening and inoffensive in gesticulating, often democratically naked groups, who do not disdain the company of groups of dogs who share the wildness of their masters.
On Friday, October 25, 2024, at 6 p.m., the book “A Boy Called Anzio” by Carla Guidi (Arduino Sacco editore 2012) published under the Patronage of the Province of Rome, the Municipality of Anzio and the Ass Centro Internazionale Antinoo per l'Arte will be presented.The book narrates, in diary form, the life of Alfredo Rinaldi, an artist photographer, born in 1928 in Anzio.
The narrative brings together Alfredo's memories before and after he was displaced with his family in Rome and, after crossing the front on foot with great risk and recklessness (with in his mind the image of an ideal people he had known only through the movies) he lived with the American Army, participating in the entire Italian Liberation Campaign, learning to drive jeeps and large GMCs and a new language. Alfredo Rinaldi was also in the American Graves Registration Services from October 1945 until the complete construction and arrangement of the American Cemetery in Nettuno, was among the promoters and founders of the Anzio Landing Museum at Villa Adele.
Inauguration - October 19, 2024 at 6 pm
Duration of the exhibition - October 19 to October 26, 2024
Location - EMI SOCIAL LAB - via Emilio Lepido, 40/A - Tuscolano district (Rome) Metro Giulio Agricola.
Events
1. Exhibition opening - Saturday, October 19, 18.00/21.00 p.m.
2. Wednesday, October 23, 2024 6 pm - Interview with artists Valter Sambucini and Placido Scandurra and presentation of the book “Lo sguardo della Sibilla” (Robin editore)
3. Saturday, October 26, 2024 6 p.m. - Presentation of Carla Guidi's book “A Boy Called Anzio” (Arduino Sacco publisher)
