(April 26, 2017) A new appointment with contemporary Italian art in the ancient Chapel of the Italian Cultural Institute of Lisbon, which houses the Personal Exposition of Matteo Fato "Prussian Blue Self-Portrait", curated by Simone Ciglia, both present at the inauguration scheduled on Thursday May 4 at 7 PM. The exhibition wants to trace the tracks of one of the most polyhedric figures of Italian culture of the twentieth century, Ennio Flaiano. Writer, journalist, screenwriter, critic, humorist, Flaiano has drawn with his writing the portrait of a country that perhaps never experienced such a rapid change in its history. In his contradictions, the author looked humorously and at the same time disillusioned. Among his post works, "Prussian Blue Autobiography" - released in 1974 - collects a number of autobiographical cuts. From this volume moves the exhibition, which wants to draw a self-portrait of the artist. The exhibition presents for the first time as a single body a series of works that Fato has devoted his studies since 2008. The theme is that of the clouds, observed - in the artist's words - as the "autobiographical element of the dreamer", remembering one of Flaiano's most famous aphorisms: "A dreamer is a man with his feet heavily resting on clouds." The quest for Fato was born from the will to stop the painting space in a kind of "still life". A concept dear to the artist concerns the balance of representation: look for a moment at the limit between writing and image, between word and thought. The cloud becomes an object that naturally encloses this limit of reality, being itself a word that does not contain a definite but continuous motion.

ABOUT / MATTEO FATO

Matteo Fato was born in 1979 in Pescara, the city where he lives and works. In 2016, he participated in the 16th Fourth Annual Art exhibition of Rome. His work is present in numerous private and public collections in Italy and abroad. Since 2009 he has been teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino. (www.matteofato.com).