Pascali Scialoja. Confluenze

The exhibition "Pino Pascali Toti Scialoja. Confluences" opens on November 8th at 6:30 PM at the Kursaal Santalucia in Bari, curated by Federica Boragina and Eloisa Morra with Antonio Frugis. Promoted by the Pino Pascali Foundation and the Department of Tourism, Culture Economy, and Territorial Enhancement of the Puglia Region, together with the Electa publishing house, "Pino Pascali Toti Scialoja. Confluences" is the first exhibition dedicated to Pino Pascali in Bari since 1981. It is a tribute and celebration of the great Apulian artist, recognized internationally and whose works are featured in the world's largest collections.

The exhibition marks the first event in an integrated synergy between the Pascali Foundation, the Puglia Region, and Electa, with the aim of promoting a slate of initiatives to enhance the figure of Pino Pascali, in relation to the artists who inspired him or with whom he collaborated.

The exhibition is made in collaboration with the Toti Scialoja Foundation of Rome.

The halls of Kursaal Santalucia in Bari, returned to the city in 2021 thanks to a successful restoration project coordinated by the Puglia Region, host a visual itinerary able to showcase for the first time the personal and artistic dialogue between Toti Scialoja and Pino Pascali, key figures of the Italian art scenes of the 1950s and 60s. The exhibition, divided into five sections, highlights the experiments born from shared inspirations, making tangible a surprising series of correspondences between themes and imaginaries.

The meeting between Pascali and Scialoja takes place in the classrooms of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome on Via Ripetta, where the Apulian artist enrolled in 1955 and where Scialoja was the head of the scenography course, one of the less academic and most appreciated teachers. By this time, Scialoja was already a well-known and established artist, in contact with the international art scene, and invited his young students to experiment without reservations and engage with contemporary languages. Pascali, just over twenty, was among the most receptive students, and from attending Scialoja's lessons, he derived unexpected and vibrant visions, a reflection of that restless fascination with the material inherited from his master and extensively documented in the first section.

Further aligning the paths of Scialoja and Pascali is their shared curiosity for America and the renewal impressed upon European tradition by overseas culture, the subject of the second section of the exhibition, featuring Scialoja’s famous imprints and Pascali's pop experiments.

Also significant are their respective theatrical experiences, a pathway to the dynamic languages of television and advertising, extensively explored in the third section. It was Scialoja—thanks to a theatrical experience that began in the 1940s and lasted for decades—who introduced Pascali to avant-garde theater, outlining a scenic space aimed at constructing a second reality, illusory and anti-naturalistic. These reflections allowed Pascali to develop first in his academic essays and later, in different ways, in his works for advertising, which show a strong interest in performance (including cases where Pascali himself played some characters, as in the ads for Cirio).

Further confluences are found in their shared fascination with the animal world, dedicated to the fourth section. Since the 1960s, spiders, whales, giraffes, and cheetahs became protagonists of Scialoja's poetry of 'lost meaning,' complemented by drawings with a zen touch, and are found in Pascali's enlarged Noah's Ark of the famous 'fake sculptures.' An enthusiastic reader of adventure novels and rhymes, Pascali developed these two irreverent and bewildering antinaturalistic bestiaries, continuously engaging with each other through a shared approach to playfulness and a metaphysical approach to existence.

The journey concludes with the tribute both artists paid to the Mediterranean locations such as Procida and Polignano, sentimental and creative geographies never forgotten.

Opening: November 8th at 6:30 PM – until May 4, 2025
Curated by Federica Boragina and Eloisa Morra

Kursaal Santalucia
Largo Adua, 5, 70121 Bari BA

Pino Pascali Foundation

www.fondazionepascali.it

press@fondazionepascali.it

Phone: +39 080 424 9534
Web: www.fondazionepascali.it