The Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli at the AIMC Congress
The Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli guest at the AIMC Congress: training cannot ignore “know-how”.
In Monreale, Sicily, the XVIII Congress of the International Association of Contemporary Mosaicists – AIMC is currently taking place, to which the School of Mosaicists of Friuli has been invited to address the important topic of training. Curated, in this edition, by Giovanni Alvich and Francesco Urso, mosaicists and teachers of the local Mario D’Aleo artistic high school, which has been characterized since its establishment in the 1960s for the teaching of mosaic art and restoration (one of the very few high schools in Italy), the Congress represents an annual event capable of bringing together professionals from all over the world.
In the town near Palermo and known above all for the Byzantine mosaics that cover the walls of the cathedral, telling the faithful, like an illustrated book, the stories of the Old and New Testaments, we look at the present and the current production in the mosaic field: New paths In fact, this is the title which, like a common thread, unites all the interventions in the three days of presentations, comparisons, meetings, appointments, exhibitions and visits.
It is precisely on the first day of the Congress that the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli brought its contribution through the greeting of the president Stefano Lovison and the report by the director Gian Piero Brovedani, invited to illustrate what perspectives and challenges the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli takes up every day in the scope of training and preparation for the mosaicist’s profession. A mission, which is remembered, is more than a hundred years old and over time it has been able to renew itself, open up to new solutions, consider different styles and materials capable of responding to the taste and needs of the present, without however ever denying and betraying that inherited artisan tradition and cultivated by Friulian masters since the sixteenth century.
Thus director Brovedani: «Contemporary mosaic art cannot ignore ancient knowledge, culture and compositional manual skills, aimed at the creation of Beauty. Fundamental is training, application, passion, know-how without neglecting new ideational technologies from computer graphics, digital modeling and recent “artificial intelligence”: indispensable subjects for the new generations of mosaic artists. On the other hand, the word art derives from the Latin ars which has as its first meaning “any activity aimed at designing or building something in a suitable and harmonious way”. It is moving towards, “knowing how to do”, “producing”. Qualities typical of a good, conscious and trained craftsman. In a summary formula: art=craft=art».
A tradition for the contemporary, as the title of the speech correctly summarizes: an educational choice that has been successful so far and which offers the students who come to the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli from all over the world an extra edge: that of “practice” of profession, which, as the data certifies, determines for students, at the end of their studies, immediate entry into the world of work.
Unique in Italy, the School looks decisively at what is needed to carry out the activity of a mosaicist today and, to the development of creativity, decisively combines the knowledge and technical skills necessary so that each project can be totally conceived, followed and concluded by the individual mosaicist. Conceiving, executing and “dominating” the entire artistic and production process of the mosaic: the high professional training course of the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli is based on this, which, in the workplace, is successful.
It is therefore nice to mention among the speakers of this edition of the Congress also a former student, who qualified as a Master Mosaic Artist in 2019: Sara La Fiura who in her speech, With the glitter in her eyes… from Monreale around the world…, talks about her experience of professional achievements and successes.
Just as the experiments, proposals and technical and aesthetic choices presented by the various speakers, who talk about projects carried out in Italy, China, Norway, Turkey…, confirm how important the technical skills developed through “doing” are, with direct contact with materials and surfaces, with practice therefore making it possible for an idea to materialize, giving full application to artistic expression.
The regional deputy and president of the Council of Monreale Marco Intravaia, with the president Lovison and the director Brovedani at the delivery of the volume on the hundred years of the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friuli.
Moments of the intervention of the Scuola Mosaicisti del Friul at the AIMC 2024 Congress.
The president Lovison, Francesco Urso (curator of the AIMC Congress), the director Brovedani and Giovanni Alvich (curator of the AIMC Congress)
XVIII International Congress of the AIMC – International Association of Contemporary Mosaicists
Monreale, Imperia Cinema-Theatre
22-23-24 April 2024
Mosaico Contemporaneo: nuovi percorsi in evoluzione
Contemporary Mosaic: new evolving paths
edited by Giovanni Alvich and Francesco Urso
April 23, 2024
