Agenzia Giornalistica
direttore Paolo Pagliaro

The Italian Cultural Institute reopens with Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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The Italian Cultural Institute reopens with Lawrence Ferlinghetti

October 27th, 2015 - The Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco is opening once again to the public. And it does so in a big way: through art, music, poetry, all in the name of Italy. On Wednesday, October 28 at 6pm, the Palace Plaza Opera (Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Avenue, Suite F, San Francisco) officially becomes the new headquarters of Italian culture on the West Coast. "Now that we have finished moving into our new home - says the website of the IIC - we'd like to welcome everyone of you to the reopening ceremony and an exhibition of paintings (many never seen in public) by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who has painted all his life but is best known as a poet, facilitator of the Beat movement and founder of the legendary City Lights Bookseller and Publishers," which published the early literary works of the Beat Generation, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Organized by the IIC and the Consulate General of Italy, the event is an opportunity to discover a half Italian artist: his father emigrated from Brescia at the beginning of the 20th century. In the past six decades, Ferlinghetti has created more than 2,000 works of visual art, including lithographs, serigraphs, drawings and paintings, some of which have been exhibited in Italy on several occasions. "One of the main themes of the exhibition - underlines the Institute - is Ferlinghetti’s invention of the verb 'fluxare' or 'to make love without touching'." The selection is also inspired by Ferlinghetti’s deep European connections (who lived and studied in Paris). Many of his works pay homage to Picasso, Proust, Manet and Rodin. The exhibition will be on display until November 30 and tomorrow, at the inauguration, a musical show by the Merola Opera Program will celebrate the artist in style. (Red)


THE ARTIST

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers (NY) in 1919, from Carlo Ferlinghetti (from the province of Brescia) and Clemence Albertine Mendes-Monsanto (French-born, Jewish and Portuguese). After studying at the University of North Carolin, he served in the US Navy as a commander in World War II. In 1947, he obtained a post-graduate degree at Columbia University and a doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1950. The following year he moved to San Francisco where he taught French, painted and wrote artistic essays. In 1953 he founded with Peter D. Martin the City Lights Bookstore, the first bookstore in the country with a catalog of only paperback books (which for more than fifty years represented a meeting place for writers, artists and intellectuals) and, two years later, the City Lights Publishing House. The publishing house began publishing the Pocket Poets series, through which Ferlinghetti intended to create and promote a sort of dissident movement against the United States establishment. The publication of “Howl and other poems” by Allen Ginsberg leads to Ferlinghetti’s arrest for obscenity. The trial that follows polarizes national and international attention on the Beat movement and the San Francisco Renaissance, and the final absolution of the publisher (and poet) marks an important precedent for publishing controversial works of literary and social value. Over the years, Ferlinghetti toured Italy on many occasions, for poetry readings and winning several awards including the Premio Camaiore, the Flaiano Award, and the Cavour Prize. As well as a writer and publisher, Ferlinghetti is also a painter, and his works have been exhibited in art galleries all over the world. He has often been associated with the Fluxus movement. In 2003, he won the Robert Frost Memorial Medal, the Author's Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

(© 9Colonne - citare la fonte)