Bernardelli Exhibition

Dear members,

You are all invited to a very special winter event: the inauguration of our next art exhibition at La Macchina Fissa.

Three is the magic number: on Saturday February 21st at 7 pm we will gather to enjoy the start of a three-month show of thirty-three paintings and three sculptures by Giovanni Bernardelli (1911-2000), a painter from Gorgo, San Benedetto Po. The exhibition is made possible through a collaboration between our association and three friends of mine: the artist's daughter, Carla, and her two children, Giovanni and Gloria Pavesi.

Bernardelli lived and worked his whole life only a few kilometers from La Macchina Fissa, in a small farmhouse along the Po River, where from a young age he worked as a woodsman and fireplace screen painter. His paintings from adulthood, including landscapes, abstract works, and portraits of imaginary people of the area, are well known to many locals. The characters he paints are local and of his time; often hard-working, elderly, humble, stern, silent people whose melancholic faces and gazes reveal how difficult life was years ago. They have been exhibited in galleries and museums of Milan, Florence, Ferrara, San Benedetto Po, and in Mantova at La Casa del Mantegna, Palazzo Ducale, and most recently in the Museo Diocesano Francesco Gonzaga.

From the moment I saw that exhibition in June of 2023, I dreamed of sharing his works with a wider audience, including members who come to visit me from other countries. Every Bernardelli painting is perfectly at home here along the Mincio River, where winter fog blankets the fields and suffused light passes through poplars. The atmosphere of the works is created by masterfully blending a restrained palette of earthy colors, applied very thinly to the canvas and then often wiped or scraped away. Some works might remind you of rural landscapes by Giorgio Morandi, others of portraits by Massimo Campigli, but to my eyes Bernardelli's works are most closely related in mood and chromatic sensitivity to a group of mid 20th century painters from Lombardy known as "chiaristi", especially Francesco De Rocchi (1902-1978).

The evening of February 21st will be a combination of music and art. Bernardelli's grandson, Giovanni, is a composer and conductor now living and working in Milan, and he is curating the classical music for the event, collaborating with the violinist Marco Nerenti and the pianist Davide Pigozzi. The program and their CVs are below. It's a thirty-year tradition: Every cultural event we host is also a moment to eat, drink, and spend time with friends; this time the menu includes local, winter foods in keeping with the paintings' theme of the Po River Valley. Please make reservations before February 18th by sending your first and last name to info@lamacchinafissa.com. See you on the 21st!

Clark

P.S. Two suggestions: Dress warmly. I will make the wood furnace roar and light all of the stoves and fireplaces we have in the house, but you know how challenging it is.

It's wet and muddy out there: Drive slowly on the dirt road along the river that leads to La Macchina Fissa! It's looking worse than ever, but it still leads to a magical place.