From Leonardo da Vinci to Cy Twombly, via Michelangelo and Picasso: the unusual exhibition highlights the secret garden of the greatest artists, which was not originally intended for public view
Hidden on the back of a canvas or scribbled on a piece of paper: scribbles and sketches have always allowed artists, from Michelangelo to Pablo Picasso, to test, explore and thus unleash their creativity La Villa Médicis , which houses the National Academy of France in Rome, has chosen to invite the public to discover this unfairly misunderstood side of artistic production through an exhibition bringing together nearly 300 original works that have punctuated the history of creation.
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baptized Scribbling – From Leonardo da Vinci to Cy Twombly, this unusual assemblage highlights delicious secret gardens that were not originally intended for public view. It is evident for the wooden panels of the majestic Madonna Triptych by Giovanni Bellini, on the back of which are hidden “a whole series of palimpsest drawings that have nothing to do with the front”, explains to AFP Francesca Alberti, one of the curators of the exhibition. We distinguish even the raw wood “a grotesque figure and its two legs (…) in a drawing that frees itself from its constraints” to indulge in “irony and play”. “Of the great masters of the Renaissance, we often know paintings, perfectly finished drawings (…) but what we actually show in the exhibition is also a whole series of drawings where the hand of the artist frees himself”summarizes Francesca Alberti.
These experimental, transgressive, regressive or liberating drawings, which are not subject to the rules and constraints of “official” art, are reminiscent of the freshness of children’s scribbles. Pablo Picasso said about them: “It took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them”. Another source of inspiration, the graffiti hastily drawn on the walls of our cities: the divine Michelangelo (1475-1564) already had fun in his time imitating the clumsily drawn silhouettes on certain facades of Florence.
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The mixture of artistic eras
Less rigid and more spontaneous, these forms represent the hidden side of the artists’ work, plunging the visitor into the heart of the creative process. The hanging of the Villa Medici deliberately ignores chronology and happily mixes eras, offering unprecedented connections between the great masters (Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, Bernini…) and modern and contemporary artists (Picasso , Dubuffet, Cy Twombly, Basquiat…).
In the wide staircase of the Villa originally intended for the passage of horses, “we have a dialogue between Renaissance drawings and contemporary drawings”emphasizes Francesca Alberti by showing a sketch of Pontormo (1494-1557) alongside two “doodles” made in 1954 in the dark by the American artist Cy Twombly, who died in 2011 in Rome. In the center of the staircase, she lingers on a Virgin and Child by the Mannerist Taddeo Zuccari (1529-1566) “which breaks down, unravels into a whole series of scribbled lines as if, in fact, the artist’s hand were completely free”. For her, these sketches and scribbles were “very important” because they allowed “to release the tension accumulated by drawing”. “We also need to free ourselves from drawing in order to be able to redraw with the same energy”she explains.
Visitors to the exhibition are themselves invited to unleash their creative instincts in a room whose walls have been painted in anthracite grey. Chalks are made available to them so that they can express themselves without constraints. The news has inspired many of them: the slogans “Putin out!” and “Peace” neighbor the yellow and blue flag of Ukraine. Other inscriptions are intended to be more ironic: “Dinosaurs disappeared because no one was petting them, we shouldn’t do the same with women”.