GIANFRANCO BARUCHELLO. MONDI POSSIBILI
La storia, l’inconscio, il sogno e l’ambiente, temi tutti presenti nei cicli degli affreschi della Villa Farnesina, sono stati continuamente indagati da Baruchello e tornano in questa mostra, con otto grandi opere, attraverso una molteplicità di media differenti, tra cui la pittura, l’oggetto, l’installazione, l’immagine in movimento.
2025
Review by Beatrice
curated by Carla Subrizi
Public opening: January 25 – May 3, 2025
VILLA FARNESINA
Rome, Via della Lungara 230
From January 25 to May 3, 2025, the National Academy of Lincei and the Baruchello Foundation will present the exhibition Gianfranco Baruchello. Possible Worlds at Villa Farnesina in Rome. The exhibition is curated by Carla Subrizi, coinciding with the International Conference on the artist's work, which will be held on January 23 and 24, 2025, at the National Academy of Lincei.
Both initiatives are part of the centenary celebrations for the birth of Gianfranco Baruchello (Livorno 1924 – Rome 2023).
The exhibition, which unfolds through the internal and external spaces of the Villa, offers a selection of works by Gianfranco Baruchello, creating a dialogue across time between histories, iconographies, and imaginaries from different periods. Art and history open up a confrontation not only between past and present but also between inspiration and creation, possibility and the unreal.
In the words of the curator, Carla Subrizi, president of the Baruchello Foundation:
“Possible worlds arise when time loses its structure: sequences are interrupted, the past comes to surprise us, and the present materializes as an incursion into what has already been. The interaction between works not only generates encounters but forms of questioning across phases and epochs, between historical models and their consequences: past and present—not just ancient and contemporary, terms in a way closed in on themselves—find new and effective ways to communicate. Possible worlds emerge by relating experiences, histories, and memory, producing short circuits: a premise that has always been present in Baruchello’s research.”
History, the unconscious, dreams, and the environment, themes that appear in the fresco cycles of Villa Farnesina, have been continuously explored by Baruchello and return in this exhibition with eight large works, using a variety of different media, including painting, objects, installations, and moving images.
Gianfranco Baruchello, with his radical and independent work that spanned seven decades between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, often stated that his entire oeuvre was an attempt to build “small systems” capable of challenging the larger systems of history, politics, and ideology.
What happens if a twentieth-century artist, Gianfranco Baruchello, meets Raphael? If the nymph Galatea, a work by Raphael present in the frescoes of the Loggia of Galatea, encounters the path of a river (The River, 1982–1983) imagined by an artist who lived 500 years later, as a winding, obstacle-filled journey? If Raphael imagines Galatea through Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Baruchello self-portrays himself along a river in a 15-meter-long work, in which the path reveals the difficulty of flowing, of being what it should be, due to disruptions in both natural (environmental, geographical, social) and lived experiences.
Other works in the exhibition also engage in dialogue with the environments of Villa Farnesina. Nomadic and fragile houses (The Wire House, 1975, in the Frieze Room); monuments to those forgotten by history (Monument to the Non-Heroes, 1962, in the Room of the Wedding of Alexander the Great and Roxane); reflections on the cartography of a territory through a "sensitive" geography (Ideal Relief, 1965, in Room 5); temporal and spatial stratifications of the complexity of the fresco cycles of Villa Farnesina, captured in the reduced scale of a not-so-large space (Oh, Rocky Mountains Columbine, 1966, in the Pompeian Room); gazes from history that continue to look at us and question us (History Looks at Us, 1972–2018, Room 4); openable objects revealing the unconscious, memory, and unexplored territories of the psyche (Murmur, 2015, in the Loggia of Love and Psyche); a garden of very beautiful and seductive plants that turn out to be dangerous (Giftpflanzen, Gefahr! (Poisonous Plants, Danger!), 2009, in the historic gardens of the Villa).
Rome, January 2025
Press Office of the National Academy of Lincei
Mariella Di Donna | [email protected]
Press Office of the Baruchello Foundation
Maria Bonmassar | Tel. 06 4825370 | Cell. 335-490311 | [email protected]
INFORMATION
Exhibition: Gianfranco Baruchello. Possible Worlds
Curator: Carla Subrizi
Venue: Villa Farnesina, Via della Lungara 230, Rome
Public Opening: January 25 – May 3, 2025
Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM (last entry at 4:00 PM). Closed on Mondays. Guided tours on Saturday and Sunday for groups (max. 25 people) at 11:00 AM (Italian), 12:00 PM (English), 4:00 PM (Italian); reservations required at 06 680 272 68 or [email protected]
Tickets: Villa Farnesina + exhibition:
15€ full price (18-65 years old);
12€ reduced (over 65 years old, teachers with ID, ICOM members, FAI and Touring Club Italian members);
7€ student reduced (single students, ages 10–18);
5€ student group (for each student in a school group, max. 25 students, with a teacher; teachers enter free);
Free (children up to 10 years old with parents; visitors with disabilities with companion; journalists with press card; licensed tour guides with ID).
SPECIAL REDUCTIONS:
Possessors of the Colosseum Archaeological Park Membership Card and the National Roman Museum ticket will receive a discount on the integrated Villa Farnesina + exhibition ticket, which will cost 12€. Visitors who show their Vatican Museums ticket (within 7 days from the date of validation) will receive a reduced price for the integrated Villa Farnesina + exhibition ticket, costing 12€. Showing the Villa Farnesina entry ticket will allow access to the Colosseum archaeological area (reservation required) and the Roman Forum-Palatine, with the R.A.P. (Reduced Friends of the Park) ticket, costing 12€ instead of 16€, valid for 24 hours from validation. The integrated ticket (Villa Farnesina + exhibition) can be purchased at Villa Farnesina, Via della Lungara 230. Online purchase: www.lincei.it - www.villafarnesina.it.
Special discounts for holders of Colosseum Archaeological Park, National Roman Museum, and Vatican Museums tickets are valid for the exhibition period (January 25 – May 3, 2025) only for the integrated Villa Farnesina + exhibition ticket.
Contact: Villa Farnesina | Tel: 06 680 272 68 | [email protected] | www.villafarnesina.it
Facebook: @accademialincei; @fondazionebaruchello | Instagram: @accademianazionaledeilincei; @fondazione_baruchello