The new protagonist of the “Enciclopedie” series is Toti Scialoja, one of the most versatile figures of the 19th century, not just in Italy. The 109 entries brought together in this volume, selected and coordinated by Eloisa Morra, draw a kaleidoscopic portrait, revealing the itinerary of an all-round intellectual, who combined solidity of cultural formation with a typically 19th-century audacity.
“Grasping the whole prismatic figure is impossible, so collective enterprises are welcome,” writes the editor. “In this book some thirty Italianists, critics, artists, performers, poets, art historians, composers, mathematicians and journalists from different generations reconstruct his work in photograms, rendering the moving portrait of a personality that proves to be all the more fascinating the more we see it extricating itself in a cultural world wary of those who dared to lead different creative lives.”
Until a few years ago Scialoja’s name was mainly associated with the painterly adventure that had taken him from his post-expressionist debut to an experimental abstractionism, but Scialoja was many different things. A poet of the ‘lost sense’ beloved of children and shrewd readers, art critic and teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts, graphic designer and set designer of avant-garde spectacles. A protagonist of his time, whose destiny was entwined variously with those of writers (Calvino, Pasolini, Manganelli, Raboni), artists (de Kooning, Pascali, Maselli), philosophers, and composers (Merleau-Ponty, Pandolfi, Vlad). In every field, Scialoja uniquely combined a reflection on the abstract nature of the languages of art with a deep awareness of artistic and literary techniques. In him tradition and experimentalism, levity and immersion in the depths of the psyche converge in an almost magical balance.
The previously unpublished contributions together with the words of Toti Scialoja himself compose a polyphonic series capable of evoking places, moments and decisive encounters of a trajectory that reflects the profile of an entire century. The volume is completed by an illustrated insert reproducing works, photographs and archival documents.
Texts by: Paolo Albani, Mario Barenghi, Orietta Bonifazi, Claudio Crescentini, Maria De Vivo, Valeria Eufemia, Alessandro Fo, Federico Francucci, Giorgia Gastaldon, Elisa Genovesi, Laura Iamurri, Chiara Mari, Michela, Morelli, Eloisa Morra, Massimo Natale, Luca Pietro Nicoletti, Onofrio Nuzzolese, Giovanni Raboni, Lucia Ronchetti, Maria Rossa, Luca Scarlini, Mario Scialoja, Toti Scialoja, Luca Serianni, Marcello Sessa, Giulio Tiozzo, Marco Tirelli, Patrizia Valduga.
€ 35,00