the first European festival on creativity

2016 Programme

Event #29

Anna Ottani Cavina

When painters left their studios to paint en plein air

The origins of painting en plein air date back to the end of the 18^th century, when artists abandoned their studios to delve into nature. This essentially took place in Italy, through the encounter with our country's light and geometry, which English, French, German and Danish artists reinterpreted and recreated. Painted landscapes have indeed pried so memorable an imagery from reality as to shape the idea of the Italian scenery. Paradoxically, it could be affirmed that Poussin, Thomas Jones and Corot contributed in the creation of that place of imagination and memory which, ever since, believing we had known it all along, we have all called Italy.

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Anna Ottani Cavina

a long-time professor of Art history at the University of Bologna, and a visiting professor at Yale, Brown and Columbia University, is the creator and director of Fondazione Federico Zeri. She teaches at Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe. Her books and exhibition catalogues include: Carlo Saraceni (1968), Il Settecento e l’antico (1982), I paesaggi della ragione (Einaudi, 1994), Felice Giani (1999), Paysages d’Italie (2001), Montagna, arte e scienza (2003), Geometries of Silence (2004), Granet, Roma e Parigi (2009), Federico Zeri, dietro l’immagine (2009), Terre senz’ombra (Adelphi, 2015). The French government has appointed her with the Légion d’honneur (2001) and the title of Officier des Arts et des Lettres (2011).

2016 Programme

Event #29

Anna Ottani Cavina

When painters left their studios to paint en plein air

An idea of public space

That place called “home”

The space of words: Helen and Odysseus

The last day of summer

The birth of space (and time)

The birth of space (and time)

The space of war. The First Italian War of Independence

Immunity and the brain: a dialogue between two chief systems. From memory to vaccines.

New males: as teenagers, in couples, as fathers

Tv series: a newly emerged continent

Across the American deserts: a voyage through 20th century collective imagination

What do algorithms think of?

That place is gone

The space of rebellion

Other maps, other worlds. Representations of space

The analyst at the movies: thinking by images

From the stars to Life: one, one hundred, one thousand Earths

Architectural space in the past, the present, the future

Families confined and without borders

The best ideas of our lives. Make room for innovation (the real kind)

The space of absence: Patroclus and Andromache

On the other side of the sea

Play it again

The space of war. The second Italian War of Independence

School is an idea of the world

Asperger Talk Show

Let’s make space for stupidity

Voyages through spaces real and imagined

Is there space for us all? The future of European migrations

When painters left their studios to paint en plein air

The memory of space. The rubble of climate and rubbish in our homes

Graffiti, tags and murals: when art extends to walls

The poetry of space. Words and drawings on that place we call home

The river is never wrong

Mirror neurons: anatomy of a revolutionary discovery

The boundaries of the soul and of the world