Fabrizio Clerici. The Atlas of Wonder

28 June 2022 – 2 October 2022

The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art presents Fabrizio Clerici. The Atlas of Wonder, curated by Giulia Tulino: a journey through the imagination of one of the leading figures of twentieth-century Italian art, a refined painter, set designer and illustrator whose boundless visionary inventiveness remains unparalleled.

An extraordinarily cultivated artist endowed with encyclopaedic curiosity, Clerici created fascinating, dreamlike and enigmatic worlds born of an unbridled imagination nourished by classical culture and mythology, as well as by the workings of his unconscious.

His training as an architect and his youthful encounter with Alberto Savinio were fundamental to his artistic development. Although oriented towards Surrealism, Clerici drew inspiration from Metaphysical art, while architecture, mysterious ruins and celebrated archaeological remains became part of an intricate symbolic interplay. The symbol itself—often embodied by an architectural element—is central to Clerici’s work, serving as the vehicle for his personal atlas of memories and wonders. Viewers are invited to lose themselves in the attempt to decipher the countless literary and artistic references, while sharing in the sense of unease that belonged both to the artist’s inner world and to twentieth-century humanity as a whole.

The exhibition stems from the Gallery’s recent acquisition, in 2021, of a collection from the Fabrizio Clerici Archive, of exceptional value both for the wealth of material it preserves and for the insight it offers into the rich network of relationships Clerici established with prominent intellectuals and artists of his time.

The exhibition’s primary aim is to recount not only the story of Fabrizio Clerici, but also that of Italian Fantastic Art, which has too often been conflated with Surrealism in the strict sense. Its artists never came together in organised groups or movements; rather, they were united by a shared cultural climate and state of mind, as well as by an erudite, allusive and disinterested aesthetic sensibility.

More than one hundred works—including paintings, prints and works on paper—are presented alongside a series of thematic sections featuring archival materials such as documents, photographs, letters, articles, design objects, stage sketches, artists’ books and first editions. Together, these materials broaden the perspective on Clerici’s work as a set designer, illustrator, designer and architect.

The exhibition includes a major group of works by Fabrizio Clerici, among them such masterpieces as The Minotaur Publicly Accuses His Mother (1952), Roman Sleep (1955), The Palermo Confessions (1954) and Minerva Phlegraea(1956–1957).

This substantial selection of Clerici’s works is complemented by pieces by precursor artists such as Alberto Martini, Giorgio de Chirico and Alberto Savinio; by like-minded artists and friends active in France, the United States and Italy between the mid-1920s and the late 1950s, including Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington and Salvador Dalí; by fellow travellers such as Leonor Fini—represented in the exhibition by several important works—and Stanislao Lepri; and by the Neo-Romantics Eugene Berman and Pavel Tchelitchew.

Among the younger artists inspired by Clerici are Domenico Gnoli, Enrico Colombotto Rosso and Enrico D’Assia. Their works are displayed alongside those of three contemporary artists—Eros Renzetti, Beatrice Scaccia and Fausta Squatriti—whose work, in different ways, reveals an aesthetic affinity with that of their Fantastic predecessors.

“Fabrizio Clerici is like a sponge: he absorbs what he sees and what he loves, stores it away and makes it his own. His memory is remarkable, drawing upon an immensely broad cultural repertoire that ranges from classical antiquity to mythology, from history to religion, from anthropology to architecture and, of course, to the history of art,” wrote Raffaele Carrieri of the artist.

Fabrizio Clerici
Milan, 15 May 1913 – Rome, 7 June 1993

Fabrizio Clerici was born in Milan on 15 May 1913. In 1920, he moved with his family to Rome, where he graduated in architecture in 1937. In Rome, he came into contact with the city’s artistic and intellectual circles and developed a particularly close relationship with Alberto Savinio.

At the end of the 1930s, he returned to Milan, where he worked as an architect and illustrator and held his first solo exhibition in 1943. In 1944, he moved back to Rome, where he met Leonor Fini and Stanislao Lepri and began associating with artists, writers and gallery owners such as Alberto Moravia, Elsa Morante, Irene Brin and Gaspero Del Corso, Mario Praz, Alberto Savinio and Savinio’s brother, Giorgio de Chirico.

In 1945, Clerici took part in two important group exhibitions: one in Rome, at the La Margherita bookshop-gallery, together with Leonor Fini and Alberto Savinio, and another in New York, at the Julien Levy Gallery, with Giuseppe Viviani. The same period also saw the publication of the first books illustrated by the artist, including Leoncillo Leonardi’s Bestiary and Luigi Pirandello’s The Late Mattia Pascal.

In 1947, Clerici made his debut as a set designer with George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession, inaugurating a prolific career in theatre, ballet and opera. The following year, he participated in the Venice Biennale for the first time, where he met Salvador Dalí, and designed the sets and costumes for Igor Stravinsky’s Orpheus, staged at the Teatro La Fenice.

In 1953, the artist embarked on a series of journeys through the Middle East, travelling to Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Libya, Cyrenaica and Turkey. These experiences introduced two major themes into his art: the Mirages and the Temples of the Egg, cycles depicting utopian constructions in desert landscapes, spiralling outwards from a central core containing a hypothetical primordial egg.

In 1955, he exhibited in New York most of the paintings he had produced during those years. Alongside his painting, he continued to work as a theatrical set designer, collaborating with figures including Giorgio Strehler.

Among his major works are The Minotaur Publicly Accuses His Mother (1952), Roman Sleep (1955), The Palermo Confessions (1954) and Minerva Phlegraea (1956–1957).

Clerici received national and international recognition for his work, which has been exhibited at MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Vatican Museums, and is held in prestigious public and private collections.