Luigi Pericle (1916-2001). Beyond the Visible

Fondazione Querini Stampalia hosts the first retrospective dedicated to Luigi Pericle (Basel 1916 – Ascona 2001), a leading figure of the European painting scenario in the second half of the 20th century.

As a painter, an illustrator, and all around scholar, Luigi Pericle was influenced by theosophy and esoteric doctrines, and took part in the cultural debate engendered over the past century by these trends. Pericle breathed in the mystic air of Monte Verità (literally “Mountain of Truth”), which, in the early 19th century, welcomed the community founded by Ida Hofmann and Heinrich Oedenkoven on the Hill of Utopia that attracted exponents from the European ‘counter-culture’ of the time. Beginning in the 1930’s, these same places saw the beginning of the intellectual adventure of the Eranos meetings, promoted by Carl Gustav Jung (whose The Red Book was rediscovered in recent years and exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2013) and by Dutch theosophist and painter Olga Froebe-Kapteyn.

After the death of Luigi Pericle in 2001, his home in Ascona remained closed for fifteen years until 2016, when it was purchased by new owners who showed a profound sensitivity to the fascination of its glorious past. This house has revealed an immense heritage of works and writings that remained buried for years; a summa of the universal thought catalogued by Pericle with monastic rigor and that remained crystallized intact until today.

The exhibition promoted by the Ascona “Archivio Luigi Pericle” Association and curated by Chiara Gatti in collaboration with Luca Bochicchio, Marco Pasi and Michele Tavola is the result of an extensive project of critical and philological recovery of his work. The project of study, restoration, conservation, and cataloguing of his artistic heritage. The large counter designed by famous architect Carlo Scarpa will gather unpublished testimonies, notes, autographed comments, exercises of analysis and pages of a diary, together with other graphic works that will unveil the multifaceted personality of Pericle as a man, an artist, a thinker.

Archivio Luigi Pericle
Hotel Ascona, Via Signore in Croce, 1, Ascona, Switzerland
https://luigipericle.org
info@luigipericle.com