The Alberto Bardi Archive
Large shelves, full of paintings, fill entire walls of a house in the Capannelle district of Rome, with many paintings posted on the walls, everywhere: this is how the Alberto Bardi Archive appears, always open for visits by appointment or on special occasions, such as the Giornata del Contemporaneo promoted by AMACI and Rome Art Week. The archive has been desired and established by Luciana Bergamini, the painter's wife, since his death in 1984. Luciana classified one by one the paintings, working tools and documents from Alberto's studio in Corso Vittorio Emanuele. She then organized more than sixteen major exhibitions in prestigious public spaces throughout Italy, starting with the anthological exhibition at Palazzo Braschi in Rome, curated with Claudia Terenzi in 1985, a few months after Alberto's untimely death.
In the mid-1990s, Luciana, a protagonist of the Resistance against Nazifascism, who had always been passionate about and attentive to new and different artistic forms, was forced to slow down the initiatives of the archive, because - she sadly stated - times had become much worse for that contemporary art that was not immediately linked to a market discourse. It had become extremely difficult to create exhibitions of a certain level, with the characteristics that an artist like Alberto deserved.
And if it had already become difficult then, without Luciana it was much more so. As heirs and friends who stood by her in preserving Bardi's works and memory, we picked up the baton from her before she died in 2006. The archive, directed by Cecilia Pasi, now has about 750 works including paintings and drawings, as well as documentation of the painter's other activities, from theater to politics to the House of Culture.
Events at Rome Art Week
2023
Free access
