The editorial: A new START

Dearest readers, START has arrived to a turn: after one year of honoured service in telling about Italian art and culture in London, it is high time it grew up, in all senses. This, in fact, is the last issue of ST*ART in newsletter format as it will soon be replaced by the new ST*ART: a magazine!...
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The future of Europe, the future of Italy:
the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs
Massimo D'Alema in Oxford

At the St Antony’s College in Oxford the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Massimo D’Alema, by his lecture held on Tuesday 8th May, demonstrated the reason why he is considered one of the most appreciated Italian politicians, both in Italy and abroad...
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In the name of the Rosselinis

“I’m not trying to solve the problems of the world – Roberto Rossellini used to say – I’m a man of the world, and I want to be present”. The BFI Southbank has launched in May a retrospective, lasting two months, devoted to the father of the Italian Neorealism, screening his most famous films as well as some of the less known....
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Cristiano Lucarelli:
also footballers think

For those who have ever asked themselves whether football players have a brain, the answer was given by Cristiano Lucarelli on 30th April at the UCL, where he held a lecture by the title Money, Politics and Violence: Is there any more space for passion in Italian football?...
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Paolo Nutini on these (London) streets

It would have been far more enjoyable without all the screams and “I LOVE YOU Paolooooooooo!!” all over the place, but Paolo Nutini’s was a pleasant show anyway. Carling Brixton Academy, 24th and 25th April, the Scottish-Italian singer/songwriter conceded two sold-out gigs to his affectionate fans...
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Escape in Art: 'The Spy' and 'The Elevator'

We often talk about promoting Italy to foreigners, but have we ever thought to promote Italian art, culture and language to the Italians themselves living abroad?...
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The artists of START

As you already know, the newsletter format closes with this issue to come back soon as a proper magazine. We will keep on exploring the very many art expressions on which embark the young Londoners of adoption, but with heart and roots all Italian, and to conclude we would like to briefly recall the artists we have met so far...
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Shining silver London

On 12th July, until 14th October, the Wallace Collection will open the doors to a princely exhibition dedicated to the Renaissance silver. This is an unmissable opportunity for collectors, connoisseurs or enthusiasts to see treasures on public display for the first time in many years...
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Interview with Pino Ferrara,
'father' of the group Escape in Art

Pino Ferrara, inventor and founder of Escape in Art, that is Italian theatre and literature in London, talks to GIORGIOSTUDIO about “his” Group.
Dear Pino, what is Escape in Art?
Escape in Artwas formed years ago by some friends who found to share the will of doing something in the art field, even though at amateur standards...
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A culinary journey throughout Italy

When I was asked to review Tasting Italy – A Culinary Journey by Alice Vollenweider, Haus Publishing, I felt curious and happy. Happy because the culinary and travelling arts – well, they are proper arts indeed! – are among my deepest passions...
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Face of Fashion

Fashion is one of the most used words of the last one hundred years: on serious newspapers and gossip magazines, on the Big Brother and within the news, all talk about fashion. But just a few have a clear idea of what fashion is, as just a few are the active characters of fashion, that is those who create it, those who make trends linked to it and create the myths of the latest generations...
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Einaudi is back!

Ludovico Einaudi, at great demand, is back to England. After his show at the end of February – extensively reported on these pages (see ST*ART volume 2, issue 1) − with which the new album “Divenire” was promoted, the composer from Turin returned to the  Barbican Centre on 30th March, to which great emphasis was given by both the Italian and English press...
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Italian Cities: The Sienese

We are at the second appointment with the column Italian Cities, and once again authoritative narrator of this journey through the Sienese territory is our photoalbum...
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Stefano Bollani: Jazz 'N' Cabaret

At the Southbank Centre the Italian jazz player Stefano Bollani, on Saturday 31st March, proved to be one of the most versatile talents of the European musical outline. This versatility, beyond his unquestionable musical skills, was especially showed in the approach to the public. Since the beginning the audience was attracted by his capacity of joking, first of all on himself...
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Surreal Things at the Victoria & Albert Museum

A red curtain opens the doors of the Dream and Unconscious play set at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in an exhibition exploring the relationships between Surrealism and Design...
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The Cosmicomics

“Without this, today we would not have been here”. The actress Graziella Galvani raises a book, showing it to the audience present at the Italian Cultural Institute to attend the reading of one of the most important books by Italo Calvino. During the evening of 18th April, Graziella Galvani performed four pieces taken from the thirty-three Cosmicomics: All at One Point, The Aquatic Uncle, The Origin of the Birds and The Sky of Stone...
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Gege' Telesforo: a guaranteed-quality
Italian musician

On Monday 16th April the Cargo, one of the most vivid live music scenes in London, hosted Gege’ Telesforo and his Groovinators on the occasion of the presentation of their new album, “Love and Other Contradictions”...
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Theatre, music and dance
at the Cultural Institute

Promoting a show abroad is not always easy: the cultural barriers, and in particular those linguistic, are big hindrances for the export of an immaterial good like art. The Italian Cultural Institute in London, with its programme, aims at doing exactly this: knocking down these barriers and spreading the knowledge of Italian art in the United Kingdom...
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Francesca Galeazzi

The artist of this issue is Francesca Galeazzi, sculptress and architect.
Dear Francesca, what is art?
Art is a necessity to me. I am a very visual person, in the sense that I tend to use primarily visual languages to communicate, thus making art is the only way I know to fully express myself, my thoughts and ultimately comment on the world that surrounds me, both physical and mental ..
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Fellini and Fashion

Some movies have marked an epoch, been ahead of their time, giving birth to trends, fashions and habits. When, in 1959, Federico Fellini filmed La Dolce Vita, nobody would have thought that this movie would mark also the debut of the Italian fashion in the world...
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Friends of Italy: Mariana Gordan and Rivello

Children portraits: smiling faintly, intense stares that reveal the astonishment and the innocence typical of childhood. Just entering the hall where the works by Mariana Gordan are on show, at the Rumanian Cultural Institute, the exhibited sculptures portraying the faces of children from Rivello, a small town of the Basilicata’s hinterland, reveal the whole extraordinary expressiveness that all kids have...
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The Italian Culinary Week at the Brown's Hotel

The offer of international food, in London, is among the widest in the world and therefore it is not hard at all to come across Italian restaurants… but we Italians well know that not all the restaurants adorning themselves with such name are equal to it, and too often we are served bland surrogates of our rich Italian dishes...
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La Dolce Vita

Is it possible to spend a long weekend crossing the whole Italian peninsula? It is indeed, and with no need to move from London. The 8th March, until Sunday 11th, marked the return of La Dolce Vita, that is the all-Italian festival which has gathered under one roof – that of the Olympia London – fashion, fine food, design, entertainment and regional peculiarities of the Bel Paese...
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Italy in London:
Meeting with the Vice Minister Danieli

During his official visit to the British capital city, the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Senator Franco Danieli met the press, gathered for the occasion, at the seat of the Italian Embassy in London on Friday 23rd March. The conference touched on very topical subjects, highlighting the general action line undertaken and the major changes that will occur in order to make the consular structures agiler and responding to the needs of the Italians living abroad..
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The Stresa Festival in London

On the 21st March 2007 the much appreciated villa seat of the Residence of the Italian Embassy in London hosted the official presentation of the Stresa Festival, in the presence of H.E. the Ambassador Giancarlo Aragona, the artistic director Maestro Gianandrea Noseda, the festival’s chairman Engineer Giovani Medeot, and Dr Bruno Beltrami, managing director of Publieurope, promoter of the event...
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Italian Prints 1875-1975

With 110 works by 45 different Italian artists The British Museum, one of the greatest temples of culture in the world, from 1st February until 3rd June 2007 pays homage to Italy and some of its greatest modern and contemporary artists with an exhibition that surveys a hundred year of modern Italian printmaking...
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Guercino: Mind to Paper

From his nickname no-one could imagine that he was such a skilful draughtsman… It is talking about Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, better known as Guercino – squinter – because of a childhood incident that left him cross-eyed. Guercino (1591-1666), born at Cento, a village between Bologna and Ferrara, gained his reputation in Rome working for the Pope Gregory XV. Despite numerous invitations to become a court artist in both London and Paris, he chose not to move from Italy, very likely to stay close to his family...
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Barbed Wit: Italian Satire of the Great War

It is at the small but interesting space of the Estorick Collection that took place, from 10th January until 18th March, a temporary exhibition called Barbed Wit: Italian Satire of the Great War. 36 original drawings have been displayed, from the archives of the Imperial War Museum, from which propagandistic postcards, very popular in the first decade of the XX century, were created...
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Meeting with Gabriele Torsello

India, Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan. Four countries, millions of stories, faces of men, women and children. The images shot by Torsello go under your skin, they are beams of lights catching the soul of the portrayed people: the wrinkled face of an old man, the smile of a child, the gloominess in the eyes of a wounded woman, a cemetery, a river...
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Madama Butterfly

Double production for the opera by Puccini, on stage at the Royal Albert Hall from 2nd February to 11th March, conducted by David Freeman, and at the Royal Opera House from 14th February to 10th March conducted by our Nicola Luisotti first, interviewed by GIORGIOSTUDIO, and successively by Paul Wynne Griffiths...
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From the Pink Floyd to La Scala:
interview with Nicola Luisotti

When his father sent him for learning the blacksmith‘s craft, Nicola Luisotti could not figure out he would have become one of the most acclaimed conductors in Europe. “You have to learn to gain things by yourself” his father told him and he did it, now stating: “I feel like a privileged doing my craft. Conducting is not for me a work, but it is a passion, a dream, a privilege””...
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A Caiman in London

The Caiman, the latest work by Nanni Moretti – surely one of the most famous Italian directors abroad – will be screened from 6th April at the Odeon cinema in Covent Garden. The trailer is available on our website. The Caiman, the latest work by Nanni Moretti – surely one of the most famous Italian directors abroad – will be screened from 6th April at the Odeon cinema in Covent Garden. The trailer is available on our website...
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Danieli Gatti conducts the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

On Thursday 15th March, Maestro Daniele Gatti conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the as much historic as prestigious Royal Albert Hall. In these rooms played as much historic musicians, of the most various musical genres, against whom who would break Music in water-tight compartmentsi...
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Antonello Maio in Concert

The premises of the Italian Cultural Institute hosted, on Thursday 8th March, a classic music concert by the pianist Antonello Maio. The event was organised by the Italian composer Dimitri Scarlato by whom Maio played one piece titled Disease. Born in Calabria but “adopted” by Rome, Antonello grew musically in Switzerland and in France, after graduating at the conservatory in 1993...
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Tommaso Starace Quartet

The Tommaso Starace Quartet heated the public that hastened inside the imposing and cold block – but the sensation is only external as inside it is very comfortable – which hosts the National Theatre. On Friday 23rd February, the quartet composed by the leader Tommaso Starace (alto and soprano saxophone), Roger Beaujolais (vibraphone), Jerome Davies (contrabass) e Rob Barron (piano), for one hour and a half pleasantly entertained the audience with a various repertoire...
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Italian artists at 'The Affordable Art Fair'

For all of those who have always longed for contemporary artworks at reasonable prices, the appointment was at Battersea Park from 15th to 18th March 2007, for the “spring collection” of The Affordable Art Fair. This fair aims at making contemporary art accessible to all and stimulating the visitors’ curiosity and interest with regards to the multiform and eclectic contemporary art scene, still difficult to define and focus...
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Friends of Italy: Coldwell and Morandi

When Kafka wrote his works in his XIX-century Vienna he would have never thought that one day an event of his life could have been “painted” by a computer, narrated through various prints and exhibited in a gallery. This is happened at the Eagle Gallery where Paul Coldwell – whom GIORGIOSTUDIO already interviewed for the exhibition Morandi’s legacy: Influences on British Art at the Estorick Collection, of which he was the curator – exhibited Kafka’s Doll and other of his works...
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London Art Fair 2007

It is the London Art Fair the first appointment with art in 2007! At its 19th edition, the fair does not show the slightest sign of ageing; on the contrary, it reveals itself in all its traditional prestige adorned with fresh novelties, returning to the Business Design Centre from 17th until 21st January 2007...
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Canaletto in England

To Giovanni Antonio Canal, a Venetian painter son of Bernardo Canal and then nicknamed “Canaletto”, is dedicated the exhibition Canaletto in England: A Venetian Artist Abroad 1746 – 1755, from 25th January until 15th April 2007 at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, directed by Ian Dejardin...
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Xanto: Man of the Italian Renaissance

An important exhibition is currently on at the Wallace Collection, dedicated to the not very well-known art of painting on maiolica. If the majority spontaneously associate the term “Renaissance” with names such as Michelangelo and Raffaello thanks to their immense works, surely less famous is the name of “Francesco Xanto Avelli da Rovigo”, one of the greatest Italian exponents of this art, wrongly considered secondary...
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Tiziano Terzani: A Man on the Road

“I was 9 years old and my brother Fosco was 11 when my father registered us at a Chinese communist school”. We were thrown in a completely different environment, without knowing a word of Chinese. Nevertheless I still remember that was quite an experience”. It is Saskia talking, Tiziano Terzani’s daughter. She appeared tall and slight wearing a light jumper, her hair combed back on her fresh and natural face...
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Marco Berti and Carmen

No, no turbid or itching stories from gossip magazines! The Carmen we are talking about is the most famous among all the Carmencitas: the cheeky, frivolous, brave, gipsy beauty, expert in men and tarots, character of the homonymous opera by Bizet...
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Ludovico Einaudi: The Divenire Tour

Ludovico Einaudi is not just a pianist, he is an explorer of sound and self. At the Barbican Centre the last 24th February, first stage of the UK tour to present his latest album “Divenire” [“Becoming”, Author’s note], Ludovico literally enraptured the audience...
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Maria Mulas: Bring Me the Sunset in a Cup

“I don’t want to add anything, you just have to see” said Maria Mulas at the opening, on 15th February at the Italian Cultural Institute, of her photographic exhibition Bring Me the Sunset in a Cup.The city and its people...
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Maya Sapone

For the interviews by GIORGIOSTUDIO we have met today Maya Sapone, a young soprano of Italian father and Thai mother. A videointerview with a very special end, in which Maya shows her improvisation skills, is available on our website...
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Music-Hall: Alegría - Cirque du Soleil

Alessandro Baricco [a popular Italian writer, Author’s Note] maintains that there is no sadder thing than a circus but boiled vegetables. I must admit that I have always been inclined to believe him. Until when a seat at the Royal Albert Hall gave me the chance to change my mind by opening, before my eyes, the incredible spectacle of Alegría, by Cirque du Soleil..
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Roberto Maranca and Italian Nights

Roberto Maranca, President of Italian Nights, what is your personal definition of art? Gosh, I feel I am back at the High School, “Maranca! Tell the classroom what Art is” Well, we need an astonishing and impressive definition here… so I would say that the Art is the attempt from the third-eyed-few to explain to the two-eyed-many what you see through it, using a special language...
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Flies, Chairs and Works of Art : Contemporary art between desire to astonish and essentialism

While popping, on 8th of February, into the opening of Rachael Barraclough’s Modernground gallery and, afterwards, into Mathieu Knippenbergh’s exhibit at the gallery Spectrum London, the first impression is that contemporary art is getting ever more odd, sectional, difficult to understand. Indeed, it is turning towards essentialism full of meanings often hard to make out without explanations...
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