Puppets and avant-garde: Picasso, Depero, Klee and Sarzi at Palazzo Magnani from 17 November

Puppets and avant-garde: Picasso, Depero, Klee and Sarzi at Palazzo Magnani from 17 November.

In Reggio Emilia, the one proposed by Palazzo Magnani Foundation, from the 17 November 2023 to the 17 March 2024, it's a show-show absolutely original, in the sense that an exhibition like this has never been seen in Italy. And not even abroad.

Going on stage will be "Marionettes and Avant-garde. Picasso · Depero · Klee · Sarzi", Coordinated by James Bradburne, member of the Scientific Committee of the Palazzo Magnani Foundation.

The exhibition is developed around the concept of “fourth wall", or rather the capacity for emotional involvement that makes a successful show a reality capable of immersing the spectator in the story being staged. When a marionette or puppet breaks the fourth wall, she wins the audience's trust, giving the show the power to blur the divide between stage and world, between art and life.

Those artists understood this well – protagonists of the world of art and puppetry – who, rather than dismissing marionettes and marionettes (in English the term puppets is used for both) as simple games for children, have taken their enthusiasm seriously and indeed, they looked to “creative play” as a source of inspirationand aesthetics to seek new ways of visual expression. The very notion of "child" as distinct from the adult manifested itself in various ways during the twentieth century and stimulated some artists to exploit the educational potential of “puppetry”, often seemingly linked to children, to create a better world and improve citizens at a crucial moment in their development.

While some artists saw the potential of marionettes and puppets to imagine a better world, satirists used transgressive and biting performances to attack the political establishment. Addressing an adult audience and drawing on a solid tradition of political satire of “puppetry”, the puppets, in particular, they were also used to criticize political and social conditions. The miniature of a puppet, in fact, makes him a safe spokesperson for a loud protest, because his bite is mitigated by cuteness. Who could be bothered by a puppet? Puppets speak truth to power in a way that traditional theater actors never can.

A Palazzo Magnani life-size costumes designed by will welcome visitors Pablo Picasso for Parade, a choreographic ballet that i Russian ballets di Sergei Diaghilev they brought on stage in Paris in 1917.

Then a crowd of puppets: marionettes (manipulated from above) and marionettes (manipulated from below), from the oldest examples, such as the Pulcinellas or the Harlequins of the Commedia dell'Arte, to those of Otello Sarzi, Reggio Emilia by adoption, made with experimental materials.

Two stages (simulating a shack and a castelet) set up in the rooms on the ground floor will allow all visitors to try their hand at "puppet theatre". Thanks to the collaboration with the puppet company Carlo Colla di Milano and5T Association of Reggio Emilia, a rich program of micro-shows/performances, interpreted by "puppet theatre" professionals, will liven up the weekends for the entire duration of the exhibition. Seeing them at work one wonders: “Do marionettes and puppets go to heaven when they die?”, a completely natural question, placing the puppets in a gray area, between living creatures and inanimate objects.

Some protagonists of Art they have "appropriated" and tried their hand at this art form for their quality of enchantment and ambiguity. Directors as a means of replacing actors. The dream of giving life to objects and the consequences of their autonomy have fascinated writers and artists since Collodi to Capek, but also many Italian artists such as the futurists Enrico Prampolini e Fortunato Depero: the puppets expressed a machinic aesthetic, were abstract and, after the devastation of the First World War, captured the sad reality of returning amputated and mutilated soldiers, as illustrated by Sironi, Carrà and De Chirico.

Until the end of XNUMXs, Vienna it was one of the cultural capitals of Europe and, together with Berlin, a hotbed of creativity in art, theatre, music, philosophy and science. At the end of the 19th century, in the wake of Orientalism, classic Javanese puppets began to appear on European scenes. Austrian artist and illustrator Richard Teschner, in particular, developed the art of stick puppetry to a high point, which influenced artists from Paris to Moscow. The section “Dreams of the Far East – Viennese Expressionism".

Thanks to the rediscovery by Oskar Schlemmer of Kleist's classic About the puppet theater (1810), puppets, toys and games for children became a central element of the practice of Bauhaus in the Weimar of the 1920s: Paul Klee, Andor Weininger, Lothar Schreyer, Sophie Täuber Arp and Oskar Schlemmer.

The investigation then shifts to the Russian avant-garde with “Puppets and the Revolution”. When Lenin and his wife Natalia Krupskaya they decided to fight illiteracy and to train the new Soviet citizen, they understood that the use of puppets was ideal and, working with leading artists, architects and writers, figures such as Natalia Sats, Samuil Marshak, El Lissitzky, Aleksandra Ekster, Nina Efimova, experimented with new forms of children's theater.

The exhibition ends with a tribute to Otello Sarzi (Vigasio, VR 1922 – Reggio Emilia 2001) thanks to the close collaboration with the Sarzi Family Foundation. Born from a tradition of puppeteers that had lasted for generations, Othello was from 1951 a young helper of the family touring company who, over time, came into contact with some of the protagonists of the Italian artistic, theatrical and cinematographic scene of the time. In 1957, in Rome, Othello begins his creative and innovative work with the “TSBM” Experimental theater with puppets and marionettes, entertaining important collaborations, staging texts by Brecht (A man is a man), Garcia Lorca (Don Cristobal's theater) and Arrabal (Pic-nic) and also creating figures with innovative techniques Very big. An example of this is the giant paper figure created by Otello Sarzi for Igor Stravinsky's show Mavra performed at “Due Mondi” Festival in Spoleto in 1984. The company also undertakes tours abroad and, in 1969, settled in Reggio Emilia, alternating national, European and international presences. Collaborations with Italian television are frequent. His numerous important shows are often technically very complex, ambitious and always characterized by a strong cultural commitment and explicit political awareness. Otello Sarzi represents, in Italy, one of the highest and most important moments of "puppetry" after the Second World War.

"I believe the main goal of the exhibition is to open up a space of the imagination where a stick can become a horse, a dragon or a flute again”, he comments James Bradburne, who is the scientific coordinator of the exhibition.

"This absolutely original proposal represents another beautiful goal achieved by Palazzo Magnani in the sign not only of artistic quality, but also of great attention to two distinctive traits of our community: the creativity, genius and imagination of our territory, demonstrated here from the works of Otello Sarzi, and the educational system, another of our excellences, also the protagonist of this project”, says the President of the Province of Reggio Emilia, Giorgio Zanni.

"A truly unique exhibition – adds the Councilor for culture and territorial marketing of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, Annalisa Rabitti - which talks about marionettes and marionettes as an artistic world, discovering it in the path of the great names of twentieth century art such as Picasso, Depero, Klee and relating these greats with Otello Sarzi, a poetic figure who marked the artistic and educational history of Reggio Emilia. This, in fact, becomes an opportunity to enhance our city heritage and connect it with the international heritage of "puppetry". A dreamy exhibition, Marionettes and Avant-garde will speak a transversal language, both to children and to the world of adults, which also thanks to workshops and collateral meetings at the exhibition, will be an opportunity to bring out the most beautiful part of us adults, the total wonder infantile that marionettes and puppets can evoke".

Rossella Cantoni, the President of the Sarzi Family Foundation says: “In 2022, the year of the centenary of Otello Sarzi's birth, we proposed an exhibition to the Palazzo Magnani Foundation that paid homage to the innovative scope of the puppeteer artist's work. Subsequently, the choice made by the Magnani Foundation and James Bradburne greatly broadened the horizons and objectives, welcoming the name of Otello Sarzi alongside the prestigious Picasso, Depero, Klee, Teschner. This choice makes us full of pride for the recognition of the great creativity, representative technique and social commitment expressed by Otello Sarzi in the many decades of life and work expressed in our Reggio Emilia".

“After the work done with the exhibitions “What a Wonderful World” and “L'arte inquieta. The urgency of creation”, with this exhibition project - Says David Zanichelli, Director of the Palazzo Magnani Foundation – the Foundation continues its project of valorising local heritage, placing it in dialogue with the great European artistic movements. The exhibition will also be an opportunity to rediscover an important part of the educational vocation of our city, when extraordinary people found themselves working side by side, experimenting and innovating.”

A series of collateral activities will enrich the exhibition – guided tours, conferences, training and educational activities for schools of all levels, refresher courses for teachers – designed and implemented by the Educational Department of the Palazzo Magnan Foundationi in collaboration with Reggio Children Foundation e Sarzi Family Foundation; exclusive events for companies as well as special projects for people with fragility in collaboration with FCR – Farmacie Comunali Riunite (Reggio Emilia City without Barriers project), ASP Reggio Emilia City of people, Consorzio Oscar Romero (Street project), AUSL of Reggio Emilia, with the The aim of speaking to different audiences, in the awareness that art, enjoyed and practiced, is the main path to combining individual development and social cohesion.

The exhibition will also be theopportunity to stimulate reflection through a series of public meetings on historical-artistic but also current issues.

If on the one hand the historical context of the movements and protagonists of the exhibition will be explored in depth, the pedagogical dimension of the puppet in some of the great European traditions will be explored, up to the experiments of the seventies and eighties of the twentieth century which made Reggio Emilia one of the world of research in the educational field, on the other hand attention will be brought to some lesser-known aspects of puppetry: the theme of embodiment and the double, from a philosophical, psychological and health point of view, up to automatons, digital avatars and artificial intelligence. Valeria Bizzari, Piero Corbella, Fulvio De Nigris, Emilio Ferrario, Martina Mazzotta, Nicoletta Misler, Valentina Parisi, Moreno Pigoni, Mauro Sarzi are just some of the important names who will accompany us on this wonderful journey.