Aurelio Amendola: Burri, Vedova, Nitsch, Duomo Milano, Bernini, Canova, Michelangelo

From Michelangelo to Burri: the beauty of ancient masters’ sculptures and the gestures of the great 20th-century artists captured in Aurelio Amendola’s extraordinary photographs. Sensitive and intense in his gaze, Aurelio Amendola has crossed the history of art with his camera, turning light into narrative. From the immortal sculptures of Michelangelo and Gian Lorenzo Bernini to the powerful contemporary works of Emilio Vedova and Alberto Burri, his images reveal the secret life of artworks and the faces of their creators. Through his shots, Amendola has revealed the most vibrant, mysterious and hidden essence of marble, its substance and tangible matter: the skin of Michelangelo’s David, the pure energy of Bernini’s Rape of Proserpina, and the overwhelming sensuality of Canova’s Amor and Psyche. Equally unique is his ability to narrate the private (or rather, secret) story of the “making of art” of certain giants of the 20th century, from De Chirico to Burri and Vedova, from Nitsch to Lichtenstein, Schifano, and Warhol. Portraits that have become part of the history of contemporary art, capturing the powerful act of artistic creation. This monograph, accompanying the exhibition at Palazzo Reale, features eighty photographs by Aurelio Amendola in a photographic journey that brings together different centuries in a single, powerful visual dialogue: the famous images of the masterpieces by Michelangelo, Bernini, and Canova are flanked by the iconic portraits of three giants of the 20th century (Alberto Burri, Emilio Vedova, Hermann Nitsch) and a selection of prints of the Duomo of Milan, with its Gothic statues, the abstract forms of the spires, the rose windows and above all, the magic of the light, enhanced by the black and white.