Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
THEhe most fascinating way to discover an exhibition is to see its installation, or alternatively live the melancholy moment in which, after closingthe works are disassembled and placed in the boxes.
I recently had both experiences, on the occasion of two wonderful exhibitions: the first in the preparation phase, dedicated by the Scuderie del Quirinale al rescue of Italian art during the Second World War – with female protagonists such as Fernanda Wittgens and Palma Bucarelli -; the other in the dismantling phase, in Palazzo Altemps (also in Rome), dedicated to Virginia Woolf.
As it is known, the great English writer had created with her husband Leonard a group or rather a community, known as Bloomsburywith the ambition to recreate literature, painting, art at the end of the Victorian age.
“Society is the happiness of life”, being together is happiness: it is a verse by Shakespeare, which the “Bloomsberries” – they defined themselves as such, with a crasis between bloom, flourish, and berries, berries – made their own.
Woolf also started a publishing house and called it Hogwarth: a name that clearly inspired Rowling for the school of magic where she set the Harry Potter saga. Since then, generations of girls have dreamed of and often gotten a room of their own.
In the exhibition I saw the canvases of Woolf’s friends next to classic bas-reliefs of poignant beauty: everything gave back the idea of a lost world. Women are usually the last to lose hope: out of three suicides in Italy, two are men.
Virginia Woolf, however, went down into the river with her pockets full of stones, after having left this note to her husband: «If anyone could have saved me, it would have been you»; If anyone could have saved me, it would have been you. The most beautiful declaration of impossible love.
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