Italics presents Panorama
L'Aquila, 7-10 September 2023

7-10 September 2023

Back again from 7 to 10 September 2023 “Panorama” is the cultural project that ITALICS annually dedicates to some of the most extraordinary locations in our country. ITALICS chose L’Aquila for the third edition of “Panorama” and invited Cristiana Perrella to curate a multi-site exhibition for the Abruzzo capital city.

The focus in the new edition of “Panorama” will be on L’Aquila’s vast historical heritage – with its medieval stratum reflected in the city walls, its Renaissance stratum recognizable in numerous palaces and churches, its Baroque and then Neoclassical stratum related to 18th-century reconstructions – in part still damaged by the last earthquake and in part rebuilt and restored to their original splendor. The Spanish Fortress with the room where an extremely rare mammoth skeleton found in 1954 just outside the city is preserved in its entirety, the Baroque Oratory of Palazzo de’ Nardis, the Giorgio de Marchis Foundation, the Casino delle Delizie Branconio, the National Museum of Abruzzo, the MAXXI L’Aquila, as well as palaces, courtyards, public spaces and places of everyday life, will be inhabited by works of ancient, modern and contemporary art and will interact with works created for the occasion. The venues of Panorama L’Aquila will not be simple “containers” of works but generators of content per se, making the multi-site exhibition unique, and benefiting from the fertile relationship with the cultural fabric of the city and its long tradition.

The exhibition project grew from the suggestion of the evocative term wit(h)nessing, coined by feminist theorist, artist and psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger with the aim of extending the concept of witnessing, understood both as an affirmation of one’s knowledge and as passing on a story.

L’Aquila was founded on the slopes of Gran Sasso in 1254 and rebuilt in 1266 by Charles I of Anjou. It was initially part of the Kingdom of Naples, then of the Hapsburg kingdom and then the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In its long history, it has known moments of power and splendor alternated with phases of decline, destruction, reconstruction and rebirth, related to the violent earthquakes that have struck it throughout its history. Over the centuries, the city’s location in the heart of Italy, surrounded by imposing mountains, forests, lakes and waterways, has given it wealth and a strategic importance both politically and religiously, as well as economically and culturally. Today, there is still strong evidence of this history in the architecture and artistic heritage, such as alive and shared is the socio-cultural heritage of the city, through religious rites such as the Perdonanza Celestiniana and the prestige of institutions such as the Conservatory, the University and the Academy of Fine Arts.

For the occasion, Galleria dello Scudo presents the plaster Crocifisso by Lucio Fontana, selected for the chapel in Palazzo Nardis, an example of palatial and religious architecture of an aristocratic style, part of a single complex also made up of the adjacent buildings of the Archbishopric and of the Cathedral. The work, undoubtedly unique in the artist’s career, well exemplifies Fontana’s bond with his training in the field of sculpture, in the years in which he elaborated an extraordinary multiplicity of expressive languages, in the spirit of a bold and innovative abstraction.

“Panorama L’Aquila” is realized under the patronage of UNESCO, the Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of L’Aquila. Belmond Ltd. participates as a main partner in support of the activities of ITALICS. Pursuing its long and successful tradition of excellence in the field of hospitality and leisure, Belmond has always been dedicated to the cultural heritage and history of the countries in which it operates. The partnership with ITALICS, reconfirmed for the second year, will continue to further the common goal of promoting Italy and its territories through art, inviting the public to see the profusion of culture and beauty throughout the country from a new and original point of view.
The Giornale dell’Arte is a media partner of “Panorama L’Aquila”.