Amedeo Bocchi. In punta di matita
Place:APE Parma Museo
Hours: From Tuesday to Subday from 10.30am to 5.30pm
Prices: full price €5; reduced €3 for under 35, over 65, groups of at least 10; free for schools, under 18s, tourist guides and journalists, disabled people and their companions. The ticket includes access to the Amedeo Bocchi Museum Rooms, the Renato Vernizzi Museum Room and the exhibition rooms dedicated to the art collections of the Monteparma Foundation.
For information: info@apeparmamuseo.it tel. 0521 203413
From 1 September 2023 to 14 January 2024, on the occasion of the 140th anniversary of his birth and approximately two years after the exhibition that investigated the themes of elegance and fashion in his female portraits, Fondazione Monteparma returns to reserve for Amedeo Bocchi (Parma, 1883 – Rome, 1976) an unprecedented and fascinating exhibition, entirely dedicated to his drawings, with the exhibition of over 120 pieces, selected from the almost 200 graphic works of the Maestro held by the Foundation.
Overall, it is a very diversified production, in terms of size, technique and degree of finishing, which spans a very broad time span (approximately 1897-1975).
Among the works on display in the exhibition we find several portraits, numerous nudes, various anatomical studies and, furthermore, the large preparatory works created for the decoration of the council hall of the Cassa di Risparmio di Parma and those, no less demanding and largely unpublished, for the mosaics (unfortunately never built) of the Messina Cathedral, rebuilt after the 1908 earthquake.
Amedeo Bocchi’s mastery in the use of pencil manifested itself very early, as demonstrated by the family portraits painted as a student when, from 1895 to 1901, he attended the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Parma. It was precisely the happy results of these academic exercises that induced the well-known painter Cecrope Barilli, his teacher and principal of the school, to encourage the family of the promising student to let him continue his studies at the Free School of the Nude at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. The specialization that he acquired in the capital is reflected in his extensive subsequent production, full of accurate anatomical studies which mainly concern the human figure. The familiarity and ease with which Bocchi approaches the male body and, even more so, the female body, give life to refined nudes that captivate the gaze with their plastic beauty: they are harmonious, soft drawings, faithful to the shapes of the bodies.
By observing the drawings one can in fact easily grasp the strong reference to the Renaissance tradition and its permanence in Bocchi’s work, also with regard to the modus operandi.
