A tower builder undertakes a long journey in the hope of finding new ideas and building the most beautiful tower for the King’s son. The journey becomes a metaphor for an arduous artistic search and the town of Trees, the Bar of Stones and a rocky road travelled together with a car salesman are the places in which new shapes, colours and scents are found. Time passes inexorably and the tower builder’s search does not seem to bear fruit; neither the places he visits nor the people he meets along the way suggest a brilliant idea. Only the peace of a moonlit night will give him the right inspiration and save his life.
Fabrizio Monetti’s images and the words of Guido Quarzo’s story offer the stimulus that brings children closer to the world of primary sensations.

Guido Quarzo was born in Turin in 1948. He graduated in pedagogy from the University of Turin and taught in primary schools for many years. Considered one of the most interesting children’s writers, in 1995 he was awarded the Andersen Baia delle Favole prize for best author. For hopefulmonster he has published Luì e l’arte di andare nel bosco and Storie di pietra e d’altro.

Fabrizio Monetti has performed in several theatre companies and has also worked as an actor in films such as Portami via and Benvenuti a San Salvario, as well as in radio and RAI television series. As a painter he exhibited in several personal and collective exhibitions until 1994. He has Il costruttore di torri as the basis to stage a production for a single actor, which has been performed in schools, libraries and theatres.

The catalogue documents the exhibition held to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Francesco Menzio’s birth at the Accademia Albertina delle Belle Arti in Turin from 17 December 1999 to 13 February 2000. The exhibition, curated by Rolando Bellini, traced the entire life and work of one of the major protagonists of the group of the “six painters of Turin”, starting with a selection made by the curators in agreement with the artist’s children of self-portraits the artist painted throughout his life. In addition to a rich iconographic documentation, the volume includes texts, a critical biography and a focus on Menzio’s activity as a teacher at the Academy.

A leading figure on the contemporary art scene, Giulio Paolini has since the beginning of the 1960s undertaken constant and unceasing research into the complex interweaving of relationships that take place in the sphere of visual experience and pictorial practice, between image and gaze, artist and spectator, past and present, time and space. The exhibition that this catalogue accompanies presents the figures and imaginative territories most assiduously frequented by the artist through forty years of work. In addition to a rich set of images, the catalogue includes a critical text by Pier Giovanni Castagnoli, an essay by Daniel Soutif, texts and projects by the artist, an essay by Maddalena Disch, another by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, a photographic essay by Paolo Mussat Sartor, a biographical note by Daniela Lancioni and biographical and bibliographical apparatus by Maddalena Disch.

This volume is the catalogue of the first solo exhibition dedicated to Calzolari by Bologna, the artist’s hometown, in a public space, from 14 March to 2 May 1999. Edited by Bruno Corà, with texts by the curator, by Mario Bertoni and Calzolari himself, the book documents the historical phases of the artist’s work and the installation at the Villa delle Rose, consisting largely of works specially conceived for the space. The book is completed by an extensive biography and bibliography.

Published by the Fondazione Guido ed Ettore De Fornaris on the occasion of the “Costruire una collezione. Nuove Acquisizioni 1994-1998” (Building a collection. New Acquisitions 1994-1998) exhibition, the volume constitutes the catalogue of the acquisitions of the previous five years and bears witness to the workcarried out by the Foundation in conformity with the cultural guidelines provided by the Artistic Commission. The book, edited by Riccardo Passoni, is the third catalogue produced so far: with the two previous ones, published in 1986 and 1993, almost twenty years of De Fornaris’ activity are thus summed up. This activity has enabled the more than one thousand works acquired by the Foundation to enrich the holdings of the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino.

The book is intended as a survey of some of the most important work of the twentieth century in different disciplines (philosophical, scientific, historical), in order to outline a multiplicity of responses and meanings and a plurality of pronunciations of the term ‘time', which can be very useful for reading many of the manifestations of contemporary art from a different perspective. In particular, the figures and forms of time that result from these readings seem to be intrinsic properties of “artistic objects”, a sort of “theory” of internal time-clocks that manifest themselves according to different grammars and syntaxes: the notions of moment, instant, becoming, interval, event, constitute the elements and reveal how time can be manipulated in a very wide range of ways, of speeds, shifts, rhythms, intervals, retroactions, giving rise to an equally wide variety of figures. All of this is constantly accompanied by attention to the salient aesthetic phenomena of the contemporary world.

Mario Bertoni was born in Modena, graduated in Philosophy from the University of Bologna, researcher in scientific history, journalist, curator of exhibitions and monographs on contemporary artists.