NITSCH: ARENA. OPERE DALL’OPERA

April 24th 2016 - September 13th 2018
MUSEO NITSCH, Vico Lungo Pontecorvo, Napels

The MUSEO NITSCH di Napoli is celebrating its seventh anniversary with a radical change to its collection: Arena. Opere dall’opera is an extraordinary event presenting a wide collection of “wrecks” from Hermann Nitsch’s theatrical actions from the sixties to date under the constant and refined patronage of Giuseppe Morra, a tireless intellectual at the service of Art, which he continues to present through unusual socio-cultural projects.

This wide-ranging exhibition marks a new stage in the research of the “Museo Archivio Laboratorio per le Arti Contemporanee Hermann Nitsch” in Naples, founded by Morra in 2008, confirming its mission to collect, display and define the hermeneutics of Nitsch's production. Opere dall’opera will analyse the genesis, development and semantic link with the Orgien Mysterien Theater (Theatre of Orgies and Mysteries) that Nitsch founded in 1957, a total work of art, which encapsulates his entire philosophy and artistic practice.
 

The “wrecks” on show, while being closely associated with the performance from which they derive, should be seen as a chance to live once more the aura of awe and worship that permeate these objects with their strong sensual charge, their references and suggestions. With Cartesian precision, Nitsch aligns and arranges materials - hot and cold, natural and artificial - on tables and large platforms, assembling the traces of blood and organic matter from his performances together with the limpid clarity of sugar cubes or the glacial perfection of surgical instruments in “an ideal unitary synthesis of the work” as Nitsch defines them.

For Giuseppe Morra, the Museo Nitsch, a nineteenth-century former powerhouse in the heart of the city proves to be another important element in an activity that now aims to involve the ancient Avvocata district in an urban renewal project, reclaiming historical buildings and abandoned sites for training purposes and a whole range of forms of artistic production. The Quartiere dell'Arte (the Art District) thus aims to set up a network bringing together various parties involved in the historic district, and to create opportunities and spaces for meeting, study and analysis. The area has already been approved by Unesco whereas the project is now set to take shape.
 

Naples is also celebrating the 70th birthday of Peppe Morra, who opens this new season of large-scale projects at the service of art and the city itself. Since 1974, when he opened his first gallery in Naples, collector and patron of the arts Giuseppe Morra has been exploring the expressive possibilities that spring from the encounter between art and life. For him, Art is “the only means of bringing to the surface his cry for freedom”. From its very inception, Studio Morra has been a reference point for new experiences: documentation, promotion and experimentation with new languages n twentieth-century visual arts, but also in poetry, art publishing, theatre and music.