On Saturday 7 October 2023 the Musei Civici of Reggio Emilia take part to the XIX Giornata del Contemporaneo with an event entirely dedicated to Claudio Parmiggiani (Luzzara, 1943). For the occasion will be screened Claudio Parmiggiani. Una scultura 1975-1991 (1990-1991) e L’ombrello di Freud. Frammenti di un ritratto di Claudio Parmiggiani (1990-2023) two film, partly unpublished, made by the filmmakers Gianfranco Barberi and Marco di Castri (Cataloga’s production). The films will be presented and discussed by the authors in dialogue with Giulia De Giorgi, art historian and curator, and with Ilaria Campioli and Alessandro Gazzotti, curators of the Musei Civici.

The two videos were shot between 1990 and 1991 when Claudio Parmiggiani divided his time between the studio in Turin and the production of Una scultura, an impressive work begun several years earlier. The images of Una scultura allow its complete view, which would otherwise only be possible through a sort of pilgrimage: the work is in fact made up of four elements located in four different places in the world. The four brick sculptures are filmed by the camera during a journey in the company of the artist who follows space, time and nature as the seasons change.

At the same time, the two filmmakers also made some shots in Turin in order to build a sort of portrait of Parmiggiani in images: the unreleased video L’ombrello di Freud, whose editing was completed in 2023, is an intimate and precious document that show the artist while he is working on a work in his studio, while he reflecting silently in front of his drawings or while he measuring a boat on the river. The two videos offer us a privileged look at the artist and his creation.

Born in Luzzara in 1943, Claudio Parmiggiani is considered one of the major protagonists of the international artistic panorama. An author rare and difficult to place, his voluntary "exile" from the Italian art scene and his long silence, for over forty years, are a radical stance against patterns and conventions. His materials are dust and ash, fire and air, shadow and color, light and stone, glass and steel, blood and marble. By assembling fragments of the world, Parmiggiani creates unusual images which, in their tragic beauty, seem strangely familiar to us.

The meeting scheduled for Saturday 7 October at 5pm at Palazzo dei Musei in Reggio Emilia - a city to which Parmiggiani has been linked by a long relationship of exchanges, commissions and collaborations - therefore constitutes an important opportunity to delve deeper, also thanks to unpublished video contributions, the poetics and production of one of the most important contemporary artists.