Exhibition: Pietas

On Saturday, April 6, 2024, at 5:30 p.m. at the San Giovanni Diocesan Museum, the anthological exhibition “PIETAS” will be inaugurated, with which the sculptures and drawings of Paolo Spinoglio, a Turin-born but Asti-adopted Astian, will be made known and appreciated.
In particular, the exhibition project will focus on the important
corpus of
religiously inspired sculptures having as subjects the Crucifixion, the Deposition of Christ from the Cross and the Pieta, that is, Mary holding the lifeless body of her Son Jesus: themes deeply felt by the artist and tackled several times throughout his activity with different formal solutions.

Pietas in its deepest sense

If today the term “mercy” has considerably reduced its semantic depth and is mostly used to express a generic sense of pity and sorrow, if not outright disgust (think of the locution “taking pity”), in the ancient world the term pietas expressed a series of dutiful acts of justice toward both other men and the gods, and the rigorous exercise of such acts in the conduct of individuals indicated their moral depth.
Christianity takes up and updates the values of Latin pietas: pietas toward God is manifested in the observance of religious practices, while pietas toward other men is realized in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, as enunciated by Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel.
Among these is precisely “burying the dead,” a practice that was also very important in the pagan world: those who, in fact, do not give burial to a corpse are considered impious (“im-pius“), with all the consequences that this omission entails.
Spinoglio’s sculptural works take up this original aspect of“pietas“: the artist leaves as little space as necessary for the emotions of his characters to focus on their actions, their arms open to receive the lifeless body of Jesus, to support him, to carry him, to give each other comfort.
With this in mind, the

Pieta of Spinoglio looks at the vertical model of the Rondanini Pieta by Michelangelo rather than the “soft” Vatican Pieta: Mary does not merely present, seated and silent, the lifeless Jesus to the devotion of the faithful, but is standing and Must support in his embrace the body of the Son. lifeless and bear the violence of that burden that would seem to slip away at any moment.
In Spinoglio’s poetics, then, pity cannot be mere compassion or passive contemplation but must become action, arms and hearts opening to always go out to meet one’s neighbor and support him in his difficulties.
The sculptural works will be counterpointed by a large number of drawings and preparatory studies made by Spinoglio on the same subjects.
As a corollary to the exhibition, valuable engravings having as their subject the Crucifixion and the Deposition of Christ, contained in some ancient volumes of the Library of the Episcopal Seminary of Asti, will be on display.
The exhibition itinerary, curated by thePaolo Spinoglio Association with critical text by Clizia Orlando:

In the installation presented, the intent to create the suggestion of a harmonious harmony between the subjects celebrating the story of the Passion of Christ and the connected space is revealed in the soft tensions of modeling.
The sculptor has shaped the material, succeeding in infusing into its folds the dramatic potential of a message emptied of rhetorical burdens, essential in its volumes, punctual in its desire to imprint in the profiles the communicative valence of his art

Under the patronage of the Province of Asti, the Municipality of Asti and the Cities and Cathedrals Project, it will be open to the public from April 5 to May 26, 2024.