The Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń and UniCredit Present an Artistic Journey Through Modern Metropolitan Life

The opening of the exhibition: 2nd of March 2012 at 7 PM

Designed and curated by Dobrila Denegri, Artistic Director of the Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń, together with Walter Guadagnini, Chairman of the UniCredit for Art Scientific Commission, which also includes Luca Massimo Barbero, Lorand Hegyi and Angelika Nollert.

February 2012 – UniCredit and Bank Pekao S.A., in partnership with the Centre of Contemporary Art (CoCA) in Toruń, Poland and under the patronage of the Italian Embassy in Warsaw, present the second edition of the People and the City exhibition, following its success in Moscow last year. The show will run from Saturday, March 3 to Sunday, April 29, 2012 in the CoCA exhibition space.

A press conference will be held on Friday, March 2 at 12:00 p.m. to launch the exhibition, where eminent Italian artist Francesco Jodice will discuss City Tellers, his documentary film series about urban realities in São Paulo, Dubai and Aral.

UniCredit is pleased to accept CoCA’s invitation to participate in its rich 2012 cultural program. However, Toruń is not the first city to host an exhibition of artwork from the UniCredit Art Collection. ThePastPresentFuture exhibition was held in Vienna, Verona and Istanbul in 2009-2010, after which 80 works from the UniCredit Art Collection were on display in the Things are Queer exhibition held at the Marta Herford Gallery in spring 2011.

People and the City

is an artistic journey through an unparalleled selection of 70 works from the UniCredit Art Collection. The exhibition explores the symbiotic relationship between urban environments and inhabitants since the 20th century, and analyzes urban space as a reflection of modern living. The journey begins from an aerial view of the city before arriving at street level, where buildings and multicultural individuals become the subjects of curiosity. The exhibition then increases its focus to explore the intimacy of individuals’ domestic lives and to dream of imaginary cities in which to live on a more human dimension.

The exhibition features paintings, photographs and installations that reflect the personal views of urban environments by some of the most prominent artists of the 20th and 21st century, including Andreas Gursky, Wolfgang Tillmans, Eugène Atget, Barbara Klemm, Jordi Colomer and Peter Blake. Giorgio de Chirico’s Piazza d’Italia (1970) provides a non-realist perspective of urban architecture, while Gabriele Basilico’s Milano (1981) uses photography to capture the industrial archaeology of cities’ outlying areas.  The surreal architectural landscapes in Giorgio Morandi’s Paesaggio (1925) lends an interesting contrast to Christo’s land art, Lower Manhattan.

Wrapped Building, which is one of the five subjects in his 1985 portfolio that modifies cities’ architecture by warping buildings and monuments. Christian Marclay’s film, Telephones (1995), explores the telephone’s function in our society, while Hamburg (1952) by Henri Cartier-Bresson, the father of photojournalism, captures images of street life.

The exhibition was designed and curated by Dobrila Denegri, Artistic Director of the Centre of Contemporary Art in Toruń, together with Walter Guadagnini, Chairman of the UniCredit for Art Scientific Commission, which also includes Luca Massimo Barbero, Lorand Hegyi and Angelika Nollert.

The artwork presented in the People and the City exhibition

are all part of the UniCredit Art Collection, and originate from Austria, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United States. With over 60,000 works, the UniCredit Art Collection is comprised of paintings, sculptures, installations, videos and photographs, all of which reflect the Group’s European identity and symbolize its international commitment to art.

UniCredit operates in 50 countries worldwide and works closely with the communities in which it serves, while embracing their vibrant artistic and cultural heritages. This second edition of People and the City is the Group’s homage to Poland, where UniCredit has an active presence through Bank Pekao S.A.

Bank Pekao operates for more than 80 years in Poland and is one of the largest financial institutions in Central and Eastern Europe. In terms of assets it is the second largest bank in Poland, while in terms of capital strength it is a leader among large banks operating in Poland.

For many years Bank Pekao has regularly engaged in financial and organizational initiatives of social and cultural policy in the framework of the corporate social responsibility (CSR). In 2010 the following events received the financial support from Bank Pekao: Wratislavia Cantas, XX Mozart Festival, Shakespeare Festival XIV. Pekao also has collaborated with cultural institutions, such as the National Philharmonic in Warsaw, the National Stary Theatre in Krakow, the National Museum in Krakow and many others at the local level. For three years Pekao S.A. has been the official sponsor of the prestigious prizes “Paszporty Polityki”, granted to the young art creators . Bank Pekao was awarded in 2011 “Patron of the Year” title by Minister of Culture and the National Heritage.

For more information on the UniCredit Art Collection, please visit: www.artcollection.unicreditgroup.eu