Cantata Bluia libro dore by Pier Paolo Calzolari, Bruno Corà and Pierre Thoretton 12 February - 8 March 2003 PDF version | 172 kB (Adobe Acrobat Reader needed)

Cantata Bluia libro dore is a handmade book created in 1999 by the artists Pier Paolo Calzolari - born in Bologna in 1943 and since 1967 part of the Arte Povera Movement - and Pierre Thoretton, born in Paris in 1967. Two printed works - one of which is complemented by manual interventions - are included among the original and unbound pages.

The book also includes a poetic text by Bruno Corà, critic and art historian. The emblematic title - Bluia refers to blue as well as to Blues and darkness, whereas dore refers both to the Book of Hours as well as to the French "doré" - furnishes the reading key of the whole work which in being contained within a metal case - measuring 39,3 x 42 x 11,5 cm - mysteriously reveals itself by way of the sixty-four pages worked by using diverse techniques.

The materials used - lead, metal wire, onionskin and temperas - reflect the means and motifs which have always been present in Calzolari's artistic research, orientated towards a poetic horizon of references extending from Byzantine painting to the lyric poetry of the Twentieth Century.

The last page of the book reproduces a text in French by Pier Paolo Calzolari. The edition is composed of seventy volumes, numbered in Arabic numerals while twenty are in Roman numerals. Forty copies of the book - numbered from I to XX and 1 to 20 - contain four signed works.

Tuesday - Friday 09.30 — 12.00 / 14.30 — 18.30 Saturday 09.30 — 12.00 / 14.30 — 17.00 Sunday/Monday Closed