The exhibition “Gabriele Basilico. Rome” arrives in Brno thanks to the collaboration between the Italian Cultural Institute of Prague and the Moravian Gallery. The exhibition is promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture, in partnership with MUNAF – the National Museum of Photography – and the Gabriele Basilico Archive, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the great photographer’s birth.
Curated by Matteo Balduzzi and Giovanni Calvenzi, the exhibition presents a carefully selected group of 60 works ranging from Basilico’s projects of the 1980s to his more recent work, moving from black and white to colour. It retraces the major themes of the Italian master’s visual research and his long-standing relationship with Rome, where he worked consistently throughout his career, carrying out twenty professional assignments between 1985 and 2011.
With a layout specially designed for the historic Governor’s Palace in Brno, visitors are first introduced to studies of major examples of rationalist architecture (La Sapienza University, Termini Station), before continuing into the evocative Baroque Hall. There, the photographs are arranged by architectural and visual themes, guiding the viewer from ancient to Renaissance and 17th-century Rome, and finally to contemporary architecture—where, in a surprising and unusual turn, the human figure also makes an appearance. One section of the exhibition also features the colour works produced by Basilico along the banks of the River Tiber.
