Duomo di Monreale mosaici
Have you ever visited Monreale Cathedral and admired its extraordinary mosaics? If you haven’t, now is the perfect time to discover one of the world’s most precious artistic and cultural treasures.
Thanks to a new lighting system, the cathedral mosaics shine like never before, revealing every detail of their majesty.
Jasper Johns, Flag (1954-1955)
Have you ever stopped to look at an American flag and ask yourself what its deeper meaning is?
Jasper Johns has done so, and not only with the flag of the United States of America, but with everyday objects transformed into visual icons charged with new meanings.
His art is never taken for granted, but is an invitation to look beyond, to stop and reflect.
It is precisely this ability to reflect on objects seemingly trivial to explain that has made him one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
Anton Sokolov does not simply create jewellery. His pieces are fragments of history, tangible evidence of a conflict that devastated his homeland, Ukraine.
Bullet shells, missile shrapnel, brass, glass and silver are transformed, under his hands, into rings, pendants, brooches and bracelets. Each creation is engraved with a number: the exact day of the war when the material was recovered.
His brand name, TRAUMART, is a powerful play on words: it combines TRAUMA, ART and TRAUM (which means ‘dream’ in German). And it is precisely this that Sokolov narrates with his jewellery: the pain of war, but also the hope for a better future. It is not just goldsmith’s art, it is memory, resilience, transformation.
Cagnaccio di San Pietro l’Alzana
Cagnaccio di San Pietro, pseudonym of Natalino Bentivoglio Scarpa (1897-1946), was an Italian painter belonging to the Magic Realism current. His style, characterised by extreme attention to detail and an almost hyperrealistic rendering, made him one of the most distinctive artists of his era.
His work, often imbued with symbolic meanings and a profound reflection on the society of his time, represents a bridge between the Venetian pictorial tradition and the new instances of modern figurative painting.
What does it take to make a lasting mark in the art world? Vision, courage and, above all, a love of the unpredictable. Here, Ileana Sonnabend had all this.
Whenever I think of her, I imagine a woman with a keen eye, capable of seeing what others missed. She was not just a collector or an art dealer: she was a true pioneer, someone who believed in artists before the world was even aware of them.
