50 Faces: works by students exposed overseas
At the MarinMOCA, the Novato contemporary art museum in California, the 50 Faces exhibition, a gallery of portraits of famous people interpreted in mosaic, can be visited until November 10th. These works were used in the Mosaic Young Talent competition, which since 2016 the Associazione culturale Naonis has proposed to enhance the creativity of the students who joined the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli.
This exhibition is of considerable importance if we consider that the Novato museum does not have a permanent collection and carries out its activity through continuous exhibition of graphics, painting, sculpture, photography … It shows a panorama on the world of the arts as much as possible international as possible.
Appearance in 50 Faces of faces of actors Robin Williams, Angelina Jolie, Robert Downey Jr., Leonardo Di Caprio, Sean Penn and Johnny Depp, of musicians such as Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix, of the painters Frida Kahlo and Jean-Michel Basquiat, of the outsiders Steve Jobs, to name a few. The expressive choice is that of the contemporary mosaic that, through the direct laying of the tiles designed for form and layout, combines traditional materials, marble and enamel, with others taken from everyday life, to give character and intensity to portraits.
Thus, for the American public, this is a showcase for contemporary mosaics, also described by the two mosaic teachers, Denise Toson and Debora Franco, a former student of the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli, who is currently a “resident artist” at MarinMOCA. They are in fact guests for a period in the studies made available by the museum to welcome local and foreign artists who have created and at the same time tell their art to interested people and visitors.
The 50 Facesexhibition, supported by Fogolâr Furlan in California with its president Luca Lodolo, represented one of the collateral events of the Marin County Italian Film Festival, an exhibition now in its 43rd edition and conceived by Lido Cantarutti, son of Friulian emigrants and important promoter of Italian culture in the States.
The richly illustrated exhibition catalog contains contributions by Paolo Di Buono, director of the Studio del Mosaico Vaticano in Rome, Nancy Rehkopf, executive director of the museum, Gian Piero Brovedani, director of the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli, Guglielmo Zanette, curator of the catalog. In the words of the director Nancy Rehkopf the meaning of the exhibition is summarized: to renew the ties that historically bind Northern California with Italy, giving visibility to young artists who, through a serious training at the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli, are giving new life to a noble discipline, that of the mosaic.
