Spring programs illustrate cultural and political context of the contemporary Mediterranean world

Maliheh Afnan (Haifa, Palestine, 1935–London, United Kingdom, 2016)
Personnages
Curated by Luigi Fassi

Having grown up in the crossroads between the Persian world, the Arab-Mediterranean culture and Western modernity, Maliheh Afnan was one of the most significant figures on the Middle East art scene in the second half of the 20th century. Born in Palestine to Persian Baha’i parents, the family were obliged to leave Haifa for Beirut in 1949. Afnan graduated from the American University of Beirut in 1955, then later moved with her husband to Washington DC where she received an MA in Fine Arts from the Corcoran School of Art. Having left several war-ravaged landscapes behind her (Palestine, Beirut, Kuwait) and having lived in Paris for over twenty years, she finally settled in London for the last 19 years of her life.

Her diasporic life experience and the various traumas she lived through from her childhood onwards—the Second World War, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the civil war in Lebanon—had a strong influence on her art, which reflects the fine line between the disappearance of a culture and its continuation in sparse, fragmented traces.

Personnages is the first exhibition devoted to Afnan’s work to be held in a European museum. It focuses on the body of works of the same name, composed of mixed-media drawings in which the artist sought the thread of a common past, where faces and landscapes, writing and portraits merge as one.

The exhibition is accompanied a by a catalogue (Arkadia, Cagliari, Italy) comprising three texts by Rose Issa, Sussane Babaie and Luigi Fassi.

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (Lyon, France, 1824–Paris, France, 1898)
Allori senza fronde 
Curated by Alberto Salvadori and Luigi Fassi

Allori senza fronde introduces the Italian public to a fascinating exploration of the artistic workshop of Pierre Puvis de Chavennes, a leading name in 19th and 20th-century French art. His work had a strong influence on the generations who followed him, as demonstrated by the ongoing admiration displayed by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, George Seurat and Henry Matisse.

Featuring loans from private and public collections, the exhibition presents a selection of works on paper and paintings by the artist. Unfettered by shared movements and categories, the exhibition reveals how Puvis de Chavannes fluctuates between Symbolism and Verism, drawings and oils on canvas, sketches and drafts, in the quest for a portrait of human dignity rooted in the humanist culture of the Italian Renaissance.

The accompanying publication contains information on the work of Puvis de Chavannes and three texts by Alberto Salvadori and Luigi Fassi, Bertrand Puvis de Chavannes and Louise d’Argencourt.

Il segno e l’idea
Works from the MAN collection
Curated by Luigi Fassi and Emanuela Manca

Establishing a dialogue with the Maliheh Afnan and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes retrospectives, the MAN is displaying around twenty works from the museum’s permanent collection, including drawings, sculptures and paintings.

The exhibition project does not only feature finished works, but also sketches and anatomical studies. Indeed, the portrayal of the human figure in its symbolic dimension prevails in the works, with details of faces and shapes of bodies, while always maintaining a close connection with the world of twentieth-century  Mediterranean culture. 

The three projects have been made possible thanks to the contribution of the Region of Sardinia, the Province of Nuoro and the Fondazione di Sardegna.