Giorno per giorno nella pittura.
Federico Zeri e Milano
Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milano
11/11/2021 – 07/03/2022
An exhibition dedicated to Federico Zeri (Rome, 12 August 1921 – Mentana, 5 October 1998),on the centenary of the great scholar’s birth.
The exhibition design aims to investigate and bring out the close relationship between space and memory, a tribute to Federico Zeri who possessed an exceptional visual and spatial memory.
The project therefore invites the visitor to retrace Zeri’s studies, itself becoming a useful tool to facilitate the memorisation of the works on display and their arrangement.
The absence of colour in the installation media, with only the use of black and different shades of grey, respects another of the characteristics of Zeri’s method, namely the desire not to let colour interfere with the reading of the works. In fact, he always analysed the paintings through strictly black and white prints, now collected in the Fondazione Zeri Photo Library.
The route continues with the Hall of the Fresco, where a division into regular, successive and symmetrical compartments has been designed using 3 m high panels. A choice that, as already mentioned, can be useful in structuring memories in an effective way, tracing the rules of memorisation suggested in the rhetorical treatises of classical antiquity. Zeri himself seems to have been inspired by these rules for the arrangement of the library and photo library in his Villa in Mentana. This creates an enfilade that also allows the paintings to be divided into thematic nuclei based on the subjects represented, respecting the chronological order as much as possible.
The route continues with the Hall of the Fresco, where a division into regular, successive and symmetrical compartments has been designed using 3 m high panels. A choice that, as already mentioned, can be useful in structuring memories in an effective way, tracing the rules of memorisation suggested in the rhetorical treatises of classical antiquity. Zeri himself seems to have been inspired by these rules for the arrangement of the library and photo library in his Villa in Mentana. This creates an enfilade that also allows the paintings to be divided into thematic nuclei based on the subjects represented, respecting the chronological order as much as possible.
