The exhibition itinerary winds through the twentieth-century rooms of the ancient factory that incorporate and fit into the Roman walls of the classical age. Serpetti’s canvases fit into this stratification, offering, in a contemporary key, a possible and real way of interacting between cultural heritage and contemporary creation, making clear and evident the need to consider our historical and cultural roots. For example, Chimera and Study for lion enter directly into relationship with Hercules and his leontè-skin of the neme-mythical lion and precious trophy of the first effort.
The Dreamers therefore refer with their vivid plastic presence and their liquid fragility on the one hand to Medardo Rosso’s Ecce puer (date and museum) and on the other to the ancient sculptures of the Sanctuary of Hercules Victor that have come down to us in their state fragmentary. .
The wounded man, the murderer, the tattoo artist, the tax collector, formally echo the warrior of Capestrano – an iconic sculpture preserved in Chieti in the National Archaeological Museum – creating an ideal bridge that closely links the origins of Serpetti to an extraordinary archaeological find value that has become a symbol for an entire region.
“New creative possibilities – say the two curators – mature in the fertile humus of the Institute by putting together heterogeneous experiences, which through Serpetti’s painting contribute to a renewed visual and cultural identity, rooted in the past, but attentive to the present and projected into the future.
curated by Andrea Bruciati, Davide Bertolini