Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Poet, painter, main publisher of the Beat writers, founder of the historic City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, civil rights activist: here are the thousand faces of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, intellectual at-large and undisputed protagonist of contemporary American culture.
The exhibition traces the painting career of the artist: from the first technical tests of the Fifties, influenced by European avant-gardes, until the full expressive maturity of contemporary works. A creative process that faces, through 54 paintings, the major social issues of the last sixty years of history: from emigration to the death penalty, from intolerance to illusion, betrayed, of the American dream. The works of criticism of modern society, dedicated to suffering humanity that dwells in every suburb of pain, are joined by canvases lit by a fine pictorial lyricism, which represent what Ferlinghetti defines "lyrical escape": an impulse to the power of beauty and the purity of pleasure, as instruments naturally opposed to hatred, "pure light untainted by pollution, political or environmental".



Rome, February - April 2010
Reggio Calabria, May - July 2010