a cura di Elisa Genovesi (Nomas Foundation)
In December 1944, the magazine "Mercurio" published the article “I pittori difendono la città/Painters defend the city” written by Toti Scialoja, one of the many Roman artists who, in the face of the Nazi occupation of the capital, were mobilized by participating in various ways to the Italian resistance movement. What is striking about this text - published just a few months after the liberation of Rome - is the way artists found themselves on the same side and united by a common intent, despite their ideological, poetic and artistic differences. During such a hard time, they had been able to put aside those distinctions that, in times of peace returned again to prevail, sometimes violently.
With the current perspective linked to an unquestionably different times and circumstances, the experience of a difficult and, in many ways, painful year 2020 leads us once again to identify into the artists who live in the city a vital and propulsive force capable of involving the entire citizenry, leading the latter to the rediscovery of its urban spaces. Today, what is the Rome of the artists today and how it changed from the past decades? Places, sociality, expectations will be the focus of our interest. The comparison with artists of different generations will allow us to capture and compare their experiences matured also in different times.