Castello di Rivoli, an exquisitely restored palace on the top of the Rivoli hill overlooking the Piedmontese plain to Turin, hosts guests in Modern Art Museumwhich houses a periodical exhibition “Artists during the war” (Artists at war).

this is group 1 art exhibition which stands out for something now rare: its name is not an excuse. artists – past and present, everything beautiful and well-chosen – really have a reason to coexist in one space. The works interact with each other and with contemporary history, following a bold curatorial narrative that emerges from research and knowledge. Thinking about the concept of war created such an important exhibition modern Artso that none of us visitors remained indifferent or unproblematic, despite the beauty of the palace.

All the creators represented here have experienced or are experiencing war in their lives. There is humanity, caring, empathy in their work, but also complexity. Art critic and his curator Castello di Rivoli Mariana Vecellio and Italian-American writer, art historian and curator Carolyn Christophe-Bakargiff occupied the top floor of the museum, collecting more than 140 works by 30 artists, from Francisco Goya up to Salvador Dalito him Pablo PicassoLee Miller, Slovenian Anton Zoran Muzyka and Italian Alberto Buri, Vietnamese artists who, with their drawings, bring back to oblivion the war that we know mainly from the western side, modern Afghan writer and artist Rakhrau Omarzad, Ukrainian Nikita Kandan and others.

“Life in wartime is that extended space that lies between life and death. With the help of art, some artists who lived or live in war find a way to distance themselves from the thought of death and endlessly expand time and space even within their painful everyday life,” comments Caroline Christophe-Bakargiff. The exhibition was originally intended to explore the meaning of war, and the occasion was the recent international conflicts. “They made us wonder how some particularly compassionate people — artists — endure the organized violence of war,” she says in an editorial.

Thus, the report aims to open a discussion about war “which goes beyond its political and economic justification, towards its condemnation, but also towards its justification as a necessary evil. Instead, the exhibition seeks to explore war from a cultural perspective, including art and philosophy,” he adds.

The Second World War

“Artists who lived or are living during the war are finding a way to move away from the thought of death and expand time and space,” says curator Caroline Christoph Bakargieff.

As we start the tour from the atrium, a selection of archival photographs shows Turin destroyed by bombing during World War II. The photographs are exhibited together with Ettore Giménez’s sculpture “The Kiss of Judas” (1884), which was badly damaged during the Allied air raids in 1942 and is therefore presented in a box with its fragments.

Studying the same historical period, the next room is shared between Music and Goya. The former was one of the few contemporary artists who personally experienced the horrors of World War II. He was imprisoned in the Dachau camp in November 1944 for refusing to join the SS. Music made a series of drawings at Dachau in the spring of 1945, which are exhibited here along with works from the section “Nous ne sommes pas les derniers” (“We are not the last”). The close-ups of Goya’s tortured, mutilated bodies and faces are in dialogue with the work of the Slovenian artist, who in the 1930s had the opportunity to study Goya’s work in Madrid.

The Spanish Civil War features works by Picasso and Dali, photographs by surrealist photographer Lee Miller, and a rare edition of Paul Eliard’s poetry. The exhibition continues with a section devoted to the artistic depiction of the “Vietnam War”, “Second War in Indochina” or “American War”, as it is called depending on the context and context of the historical narrative.

Below are artistic reflections on the war in the Balkans, the conflicts in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine. The exhibition ends in the museum’s evocative attic space with the aftermath of the wars in Afghanistan. This ongoing conflict is presented in a recently commissioned work by Afghan artist Rahraw Omarzad, founder of the CCAA Contemporary Art Center in Kabul and the women’s art school there. The video for “New Scenario” was created during the artist’s stay in Castello di Rivoli, after he received asylum in Italy. Filmed in a 1943 air raid shelter in Turin, reflecting the cyclical nature of human destiny and the difficulty of breaking free from the logic of trauma, violence and conflict as roles are historically reversed: those in power lose and win again and again senselessly.

The duration of the exhibition is until 19.11.