ArcimboldoFace à Arcimboldo

“While Arcimboldo’s composite portraits are now universally known, the richness and diversity of his work remains to be discovered. Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1593) was an inventor and a thinker whose thoughts and works go beyond the question of the representation of the face in painting. The exhibition shows the extent to which his work has influenced the history of art for five centuries and has shed light on a number of current philosophical and political debates.
Face à Arcimboldo embodies the current state of art through the eyes of 130 artists, whose choice was guided by the influence – assumed, unconscious or fantasized – that the Lombard master has had on their thinking and their art. Each of the 250 works in the exhibition bears the imprint of Arcimboldo’s creative freedom and follows a red thread that runs through the centuries to the present day.

Directed by the duo M/M, whose graphic work literally invites the reader to face Arcimboldo, the book combines essays by Chiara Parisi and Anne Horvath, co-curators of the exhibition, with those of two specialists in Mannerism, Patricia Falguières and Antonio Pinelli. He also invites Yasha David to discuss his collaboration with Pontus Hultén on the landmark 1987 exhibition at Palazzo Grassi, The Arcimboldo Effect. Donatien Grau composes a commented chronology from Arcimboldo’s time to the present day and Maurizio Cattelan a manifesto as a conclusion. “