- Art & Culture
Maria Chiara Toni
The private garden - exhibition of engravings
INAUGURATION: Saturday, Feb. 7, 4:30 p.m.
Sticks, burins, points, engravings, pencils, drawings: in the evocative settings of Cremona's Archaeological Museum, Chiara Toni's artistic world testifies to a life dedicated to observing with delicate sensitivity and acute intelligence the human soul, thoroughly investigating even its darkest and deepest sides.
The introspective touch of her works surprises us with the strength of the analysis, and, at the same time, guides us in finding possible solutions, alternative escape routes to a world that seems to have lost the North in its compass. There are many works dedicated to the reality we live in, to the conformism that crushes us, to those interchangeable masks behind which we too often take refuge, losing our identity. And it is precisely to the problem of identity that the artist returns in many of her works, whether it is the female identity or that of an oppressed people or even simply that of each one of us, daily threatened by sirens who sing us melodies that are completely artificial.
The engravings, for which she has received coveted awards, are the mirror of her feeling and, almost, a mission to which she has never failed. An example of this is the collection of two thousand specimens, in the Prints Cabinet of our Civic Museum, the result of donations from the artists of the ten Biennales of International Contemporary Graphic Art, "L'Arte e il Torchio," conceived and organized together with Vladimiro Elvieri, her companion in art and life.
Exploration in different techniques and especially engraving experimentation, have thus led her to an increasingly convincing expressive freedom and to unusual technical goals. So too in drawing, to which she has devoted herself with increasing frequency over the years and which she has always treated as a technique to be experimented with and not just used. Her being free in art and in life has allowed her to express her view of the world in the most vital of ways, delivering to us an expressive value of rare intensity and a stunning technical performance.
The exhibition is curated by Vladimiro Elvieri and Donatella Migliore.
The exhibition catalog is on sale at the box office for €8.
The exhibition catalog is on sale at the box office for €8.
