Description
Forum Space at the LETS Museum – Trieste Literature
Opening: Thursday, September 18, 5:30 PM
The marriage of figurative art and literature is often a highly successful one, yielding interesting results. Writers and painters intertwine and form deep friendships, enriching each other's work. Consider the fraternal relationship between Italo Svevo and Umberto Veruda, or between Umberto Saba and Vittorio Bolaffio, to name two well-known examples in Trieste. Equally often, painters experiment with literary influences on their canvases (sheets of paper, screens), creating works that renew the fascination of reading through the filter of artistic interpretation. The LETS Museum – Trieste Literature is sensitive to this connection, which allows the individual and private experience of reading to be conveyed in space. It celebrates it with an exhibition, curated by Riccardo Cepach, featuring "literary" works by painters and illustrators of the past and present.
These are two canvases by Cesare Sofianopulo – inspired respectively by the figures of Charles Baudelaire (1936) and Edgar Allan Poe (1951), generously made available to LETS by the Revoltella Museum, which preserves them, and by the Sofianopulo heirs – and a rare sketch for a decomposable Christmas tree with toys to be reproduced on children's bedroom fabric signed by Anita Pittoni (c. 1930), who is also the protagonist of a 2017 watercolor by Ugo Pierri from the series The Siren's Hair, a gift from the author. Also donated by their respective authors are the paintings and printed panels inspired by the various chapters of Joyce's Ulysses, which, over the years, have been part of the exhibitions staged for the Bloomsday festival, thanks to the creativity of Paolo Colombo, Robert Berry, Andy Prisney, Salvatore Autuori, Jan Sedmak, and Max Calò.
The exhibition concludes with a previously unpublished work—never before exhibited to the public—also brought to the museum thanks to the generosity of its author, Ivan Cangelosi. Zeno's Conscience (2025) is not so much a painting inspired by Svevo's masterpiece as, one might say, a version or a very unique edition of the novel, created using the distinctive technique of Cangelosi, a Sicilian-born artist living in Vienna. The words of the work themselves, neatly handwritten on the sheet of paper using various colored pens, form the illustration, which, naturally, is also inspired by the novel. A squared representation, therefore, which will be illustrated to visitors with a video message from Cangelosi.
The inauguration will be attended by curator Riccardo Cepach, Councilor for Education and Family Policies Maurizio De Blasio, Revoltella Museum curator Susanna Gregorat, Paola Pitao Sofianopulo and Antonio Sofianopulo, descendants of the famous painter, and some of the artists mentioned, both in person and online.
The exhibition, which is free to attend, will remain open until October 6th during the museum's opening hours: Wednesday to Monday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm; Sunday, 10:00 am to 1:00 pm; closed on Tuesdays.
Organized by:
LETS Letteratura Trieste
