excerpt from the official article:
Cesare Catania’s contemporary art goes beyond painting and transforms itself into a social message
Milan – The first stage of the project entitled “L’Abbraccio” has just ended, a project with a socio-cultural background that takes its origin from the homonymous and famous work created by Cesare Catania. An inclusive project that will embrace various cities thanks to virtuous collaborations with local institutions, today more than ever at the forefront of issues affecting the most fragile post-pandemic segments which at the same time are and represent our hope for the future. An artistic project that began its journey from the skyline on the 31st floor of Palazzo Pirelli, one of the symbolic places of an Italian city and country that nonetheless looks to the future
“After such a long period in which the health crisis has accustomed us to social distancing, the time has come to embrace each other” Thus explains the artist. “With this project and with the display of this tapestry, my hope is to reawaken everyone’s natural desire to embrace each other again. In a simple way… without fear anymore… giving what has been taken away from us… our ability to demonstrate our love, our feeling. Our simple good to the people closest to us. This is why the project was primarily aimed at children, our pure energy, our primordial being without conditioning. With them we have made the work alive among us, colouring, playing, laughing; each child received a copy of the hug in black and white and with his imagination and creativity he could create a unique mini work and become a wonderful little artist together with the others. ” continues Cesare Catania, the artist who created a memorable day in the very week in which the 54th anniversary of the world day dedicated to children and childhood (World Children’s Day) is commemorated.
During the morning of Thursday 17 November, about thirty elementary school students joined the project hosted by the Lombardy Regional Council by coloring a black and white version of the painting of the embrace, an oil on canvas tapestry created in 2016 by Cesare Catania which represents in the strict sense the embrace between a man and a woman and in the broad sense the embrace between two people of different colors. The oil painting on canvas has already been exhibited among other times in 2019 at the Museum of the Villa Reale in Monza and in 2016 at the Swiss Institute of Lugano during the international week of the Italian language. The works colored by the children during Thursday morning were joined together in a single collective work of art co-signed by all the children and by the artist himself, a work entitled “The Children’s Embrace”.
Also greeting the “little artists” during the creative morning was the President of the Lombardy regional council Alessandro Fermi, who thanked both the artist Cesare Catania for bringing such an important project to the community and the San Babila Association for supporting the artist himself. The Akbaraly Foundation, a Madagascar foundation that has been fighting extreme poverty and inequalities for years, also greeted the children involved and the project.
“I am really satisfied with how the institutions and the public, young and old, have given their participation and support. The confirmation that the time has really come to get back together by sharing the beauty of life that Art has always had the honor and the duty to represent. When we are all together, beautiful projects take on more varied colors and values, new spaces are found in diversity, future horizons still to be discovered in mergers and partnerships. A special thanks to all the people who believed in me, who supported me who contributed to the success of this preview of the L’Abbraccio project, to all those who attended the event or who in any case participated with joy even from afar and intensity” continues the Artist.
The day of Thursday 17 November continued with “a hug also for the adults”. In the afternoon, at 5 pm, the exhibition opened the doors of the skyline on the 31st floor of Palazzo Pirelli to friends, collectors, the press and selected guests to explain the project in detail and to admire Cesare Catania’s contemporary art exhibition live, set up for the occasion in the same Sala Belvedere Enzo Jannacci, an exhibition that has displayed about thirty works of material art including paintings and sculptures created between 2017 and 2022 by the master Cesare Catania, in addition to the already mentioned tapestry entitled “L’Abbraccio” .
