141 - Un secolo di disegno in Italia

A century-long journey through Italian art, with drawing as the guiding thread: 141 works by 141 artists mark the stages of the "story in images" that unfolds in this book, ranging from 1909 to 2020 and spanning the most important artistic experiences and movements of the twentieth century, from Futurism to Arte Povera, right up to the present day.

Each image is accompanied by a reflection from the author - unprecedented with contemporary artists - on the theme of drawing; a theme that is also explored and expressed from different perspectives in the texts by Maura Pozzati and Claudio Musso, curators of the project. Maura Pozzati proposes a reflection on drawing that does not separate "the ideational moment from the executive, the thought process from that of the hand" and that highlights the specific features of this technique compared to others: drawing uses simple means to give life to "fragile works if we think of the support, yet endowed with great poetry and compositional equilibria; a space of experimentation, of soul-searching and secrets, captured in the moment when the hand is available and agile". Claudio Musso chooses to recount the "ungraspable path of drawing" from three points of view - drawing as an object, drawing as a project, drawing as a subject – underlining how drawing is "a twoway path, as it makes it possible to introject through the knowledge of the existent, but at the same time, it is the most effective medium by which to exteriorise one’s own individuality".

In addition to images of the works and critical texts by the curators, 141. Un secolo di disegno in Italia also includes a selected bibliography on the theme of drawing. The book is published to mark the exhibition of the same name organised by the Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna as part of the Art City Bologna 2021 programme.