Published: 15 stycznia 2012 Views: 1732 Books, Publications

People and the City

People and the City sets out to undertake a journey through a range of different themes that have characterised the relationship between the city and its inhabitants since the very beginning of the 20th century and does so through paintings, photographs, installations and videos from the various collections of the UniCredit Group, from Italy to Germany, from Austria to Turkey and Russia. Thus, the exhibition presents man’s relationship with urban space – space to be understood in both the geographical and mental sense – the city as the setting of transformation, contamination, an organism in a constant state of change, where history lives side by side with the imagination of the future. In order to understand the city we need to get to know its inhabitants, see them in action, identify the similarities and differences among those who belong to the urban community.

Ever since ancient times, the city has played a central role in the imagery of humanity. The city is the stage for modern living par excellence, and it is no coincidence that it also constituted one of the canonical loci of intellectual and artistic reflection throughout the 20th century. The city has embodied the spirit as well as the contradictions of modernity. It was looked upon as a Moloch capable of devouring its own inhabitants or as the place in which any hope could be given the chance to shine; the backdrop to both our worst nightmares and our wildest dreams.

A city in which the very concepts of the centre and outskirts are constantly changin, in the ongoing process of broadening its limits: the overall vision of a city gives rise to extraordinarily evocative images. The city is the place where everything happens, or at least where anything might happen: work and entertainment, culture and sport, every moment of the day may be filled; the city is an enormous container inside which the individual or the group find themselves performing on the stage of a show unfolding right before their eyes.

CATALOGUE

Edited by

Walter Guadagnini

Catalogue texts

Walter Guadagnini

Bärbel Kopplin

Entries by

Claudia Amadio

Evelyn Benesch

Heike Eipeldauer

Silvia Ferrari

Zita Kranz