Daniele Ratti: “Two hearts and a hut”, the exhibition in Naples

“THEto the construction of my love
I like to look at it go up
Like a hundred platform skyscraper
Or like a sunflower ”he sings Ivano Fossati, the poet.

And the idea of ​​building belongs to both relationships and houses. The house of love was born from feeling and soon becomes the temple of existences and the custodian of that passion. A space that hosts life, gestures and habits. Create images, memories, makes history.
Daniele Rattiphotographed 42 residences of other illustrious characters who have created or dedicated their homes to their loves. The project is entitled Two hearts and a hut, and is now exposed to Galleries of Italy in Naples by Benedetta Donato.

Observing the sequence of interior and exterior, landscapes and details, images are born, we are faced with the frames of a film in which our imagination fills the scene by animating the protagonists.
There are perhaps not the objects, things, the furniture we choose, the paintings that we hang out that they draw us and tell who we are?

José Saramago and Pilar del Rio

Here is the Saramago sofa, blue green, slightly discolored, in the Lanzarote house. That corner of peace that the immense writer shared with his second wife, Pilar del Riotranslator in Spanish of all his work, from the mid -90s until his death in 2010. He excites imagining him lying there, while correcting the draft of that masterpiece of human compassion which is Blindness.

Of this life, just Pilar del Rio said:
“We didn’t want life to pass like this, we wanted to live it thoroughly. This is why we perhaps chose to go to be on an island. Because there was no room for the chatter, the noises of the company in Lanzarote did not arrive. If I had to say that life was, I would say that it was a life of mutual attention and understanding, a life of care. We vibrated and worked together, that’s all”.

Le Corbusier (pseudonym of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris) and Yvonne Gallis

There are those who draw them and leave an indelible imprint in the history of humanity. This is the case of Le Corbusier who changed the history of architecture – even if he did not limited himself to that, but was a designer, painter, urban planner – giving us his work full of innovative inventions, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1951 Le Corbusier designed a small house for his wife Yvonne, a prefabricate built in Corsica, Based on his project inspired by a tool for tools. The CabanonsThis is the name of the house, became their summer refuge until 1965, the year of his death, which took place in front of it, while swimming in the waters of the sea of ​​the French Riviera. Very small, but perfectly functional dimensions, the Cabanon measures 3.66 meters by 3.66 and is 3 meters high. Inside there is everything: bathroom, kitchen, bed. For Le Corbusier, you don’t need anything else. In that minimum space there is what it is enough for him. It is a manifesto, a declaration of love for the measure, simplicity, and perhaps also for Yvonne.
The Cabanons It is part of the architectural site today known as Modern Caps.

Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti

Then there are the loves of our life, those we admired and with whom we dreamed of. How crazy of love had to be That genius by Michelangelo Antonioni when, during the filming of the red desert film on the island of Budelli, he discovered this special place and decided to build a dome on the sea to be with Monica Vitti? Wonderful experiment of contemporary architecture, between an igloo and a dome, The domethe choice of the name is inevitable, is surrounded by greenery, overlooking the sea. Since 1970 they have been their refuge, but also the place of welcome and exchange with a coming and going of intellectuals and artists. It seems it was precisely the legendary Monica who discovered the architect Dante Bini and his revolutionary technique: a unique casting of concrete inflated by an air chamber. As often happens in our country, today it is abandoned and is the subject of a campaign to be able to preserve its historical and architectural value. Extraordinarily harmonious as it is affects for the unity between internal and external spaces, the stairs, the curves, as if everything were part of a single movement. A spiral, a shell. Every detail has been thought. Rem Koolhaas – Dutch architect and essayist – has called it one of the most beautiful architectures of the past hundred years.

Mimmo and Angela Jodice

For those who love photography, Mimmo Jodice and his son Francesco are essential masters. Different poetics, they distinguish them clearly, but both deep, intense, aware, often surprising. While not believing that the vocation is transmitted from father to son, but rather imagining that education for gaze and visual culture have permeated this family in which Angela, wife of Mimmo and Mother of Francesco, has a special role, radiates vitality and leads the dance of her husband’s bright career. Their home of Posillipo has two floors: under the study with the archive, above the home. Everywhere works of art, paintings, photographs, sculptures, objects exchanged with artists, friends, street companions. A place full of life where images and objects tell stories and projects. Observing these environments, the orderly arrangement of the images, the full and emptiness of the space is traced back to that of the master’s visions. Who knows if the master those images of lyric power has dreamed of them even before making them or if, now that we imagine it lying on this chaise longue by Le Corbusier, he has expanded the thought until he coincided with his horizons on the sea.

The exhibition

Two hearts and a hut
Photographs by Daniele Ratti

Gallerie d’Italia – Naples, Museum of Intesa Sanpaolo

Until September 14, 2025
Edited by Benedetta Donato

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