Mario Giacomelli, A hundred years of Poetry – Arte.it

A hundred years after the birth of Mario Giacomelli (Senigallia, 1925 – 2000), Two major exhibitions celebrate the figure and work and return to the audience the complexity of one of the absolute protagonists of the Italian photography of the twentieth century. In Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni hosts “The photographer and the artist“(May 20 – August 3, 2025), while Royal Palace In Milan suggests “”The photographer and the poet“(22 May – 7 September 2025). Two autonomous but additional paths, which see the curatorship of Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and the cousin Katiuscia Bondi Giacomelli And who return the double axis of his research: on the other hand, dialogue with painting, matter and experiments; On the other hand, the deep link with the word and poetry.

Yourselfraised in a typography and then in a photo atelier, Giacomelli starts photographing in the 1950s. He is a personal and unmistakable language, where photography is never easy of reality, but the ability to understand the moment, fragments of necessarily subjective, visionary images. In his works – from the hospices to the seminarists, from the Marche campaign to the abstract landscapes – a narrative tension, a formal radicality and a continuous reflection on human condition are intertwined. His work moves on the edge of the canonical definitions, far from documentary realism and the rules of the report, instead open a photo as an autonomous expression space, between lyric, sign and memory. Photos that settle as real icons, unforgettable, unmistakably. Especially are perhaps the most famous work – those Pretini who play joyfully in an unreal snow whiteness – Fragments of a suspended, eternal, unchanging and at the same time so unreal story that they become very lively, imagined memories, cultivated moments who know how, who knows why.

In Rome, the exhibition is divided into six sections and brings together more than 300 original prints, many of which are not published, on a path that crosses Giacomelli’s work with that of artists such as those of artists Afro, Buri, Memorials, Roger Ballen. And the image that emerges is that of an author who is perfectly inserted in the visual context of that second Italian twentieth century, capable of dialogue with the most popular themes of information to poor art and transavaggardy. At least this is the statement that the two curators want to push us. The heart of the exhibition is the series *I don’t have hands caressing my face* (1961–1963), presented in an installation space that improves its dynamic and spiritual power. The exhibition closes the photographic reproduction of his studies, with The famous Kobell car And the original expansion that has made a loyal companion to the Senigallian artist for many years.

In Milan, the route focuses on the literary side of Giacomelli’s work and the series collects inspired by poets such as such as Leopardi, Corazzini, Cardarelli, Masters, Montale and Permunian. Here too, more than 300 works photography as a language, as a narrative tool, like poetry. Every photography therefore becomes a symbol, fragment, inner echo. In the series of the eighties and nineties, the documentary thrust dissolves in a thin story, made of expectations and silences, where space is no longer context but threshold, and time shatters in intuitions.

For more information:
The photographer and the artist
The photographer and the poet
Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome
Royal Palace, Milan
Mario Giacomelli -Archive