Artist Talk:
Roberto Vignoli e Claudia Quintieri
in Italian
Poetry and Photography
May 9th
Aperitivo at 5:30 p.m. - Lecture at 6 p.m.
at AIS-Phila
Roberto Vignoli and Claudia Quintieri will present their recently published collaborative book Accendi una finestra.
The poetry is by Claudia Quintieri, and Roberto Vignoli took the photographs in response to the poems. They will also talk about the classic history from which the poetry derives (centered on Hadrian’s lover Antinous - or Antinoo - whom Hadrian deified).
There was a colossal marble head of Antonious at the Borghese family’s Villa Mondragone (near Frascati) and that’s where Roberto’s photos were made. The portrait head was housed at Villa Mondragone from its discovery in the early 1700s until it was sold to Napoleon in 1807. It’s now at the Louvre, but is still called the “Mondragone Antinous. In view of the book’s title, Roberto Vignoli specifically photographed the windows of the villa, which once was the summer papal residence before it moved to Castelgandolfo.
Roberto Vignoli has worked for some of the most important photo agencies in the world, including Image Bank (now part of Getty Images), AGF and Luz. He worked at L'Espresso for 27 years, including ten years as the photo curator for the foreign and cultural pages. His work has been published in Il Messaggero, L'Unità, Il Tirreno, and Penthouse, among many others. Vignoli has also worked as a fine art photographer and this has been his concentration since retiring from the press.
He has been shown at the MACRO in Rome, the Piomonte Arte Contemporanea, the Museo Laboratorio d'Arte Contemporanea and in exhibitions on every continent. Vignoli also writes both prose and poetry, and has previously collaborated photographically with poets such as Claudio Damiani. In addition to Italy, he has done extensive documentary work in South America, Cuba, and the American West - where he has worked with native Indian tribes.
Claudia Quintieri was born in Rome on March 9, 1975, and graduated in Humanities with a focus on Contemporary Art History from La Sapienza University of Rome. She is a writer, video artist, and journalist. As a journalist, she contributes to the publications Insideart, Art a part of cult(ure), and Presstletter. She has participated in various solo and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad as a video artist, including the New Media Festival in Miami.
She has published five books, including a collection of short stories (La voglia di urlare, Edizioni del Giano, 2012), a short novel (E così la bambina è caduta, Erga, 2014), a biography (Il raggiro del mondo in 80 anni, co-written with Giorgio Fabretti, Aracne Editrice, 2020), and two collections of poetry (Palermo mon amour, Edizioni del Faro, 2020; Poesie di quarantena, Barkov, 2021).
“The America-Italy Society of Philadelphia promotes friendship and cultural understanding between the Republic of Italy and the United States of America”
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