Giuseppe Veneziano and his "True Stories"

Last week, before it was over, I was in Via San Felice, in the heart of old Bologna, a stone's throw from the Two Towers and Piazza Maggiore, precisely in the 15th-century Palazzo Pallavicini. Amidst frescoes and ornaments, the various rooms of the palace hosted from 16 June to 18 September, the works featured in the exhibition 'True Stories' by the Sicilian painter much discussed at the time, Giuseppe Veneziano.

I was also lucky enough to meet the artist, who told us about some of the works on display.

There are those who hate him and those who love him. Veneziano, re-proposes paintings and works from the history of art that we all know, and with his unmistakable touch, he plays with and reinvents the art of the past, re-proposing it in a modern version with a pop style. The artist tackles sensitive themes such as politics, sex, and religion by portraying historical personalities, celebrities of the present, film icons but also comic and cartoon characters on his canvases.

During the visit, it becomes apparent how popular and high culture coexist and collide in each work, revealing and showing through 'true stories' (hence the title 'true stories') the many contradictions of the contemporary reality that surrounds us.

False myths, politics, and taboo subjects such as sex and autoeroticism, are laid bare in an ironic, sarcastic, provocative, and amusing way that it is impossible not to crack a smile in front of some of the paintings, and the titles given to them, despite some of the delicate themes.

Veneziano told us about this painting, the most discussed but also the most beautiful for him. The relationship between politics and religion is depicted here.

The work is entitled 'The Madonna of the Third Reich', which immediately recalls paintings from the late 15th century depicting 'The Virgin and Child' and we are surprised by the presence of the dictator of Nazi Germany, Hitler in a child version with his unmistakable mustache. Here Giuseppe Veneziano brings the Christian religion closer to Nazism as if to identify it with a kind of spirituality. Through this work, Giuseppe Veneziano tries to shock people.

According to Giuseppe Veneziano in fact:

'If art cannot change the world, at least try to shake consciences'.

Covid and lockdown could not be missing among his works; in fact, we find several canvases that take up famous Renaissance classics where the subjects are wearing or holding the much-talked-about masks such as Botticelli's Venus or a Joker, alone and sad at home during the lockdown.

As previously written, sex, autoeroticism, and sexting are not lacking in Veneziano's works and are shown without too much modesty in his canvases, but they do not disturb or offend (not all of them, at least), on the contrary, they make one smile as we see the cartoon and comic book characters or famous paintings, rejoicing in one of life's pleasures.

We see Snow White taking intimate selfies, as well as the girl with the pearl earring. We find Wonder Woman in acts of autoeroticism, Dante together with a naked Beatrice or Marge from The Simpsons completely naked posing, and many others.

Of course, we also have less provocative but still impressive and ironic works such as 'The Last Supper' which is dubbed 'The Last Selfie' where Jesus Christ is gathered together with the twelve apostles all taking selfies with their smartphones. Or one rather controversial but for me beautiful one where the Pope is depicted surfing. We cannot miss Dante Alighieri writing his Divine Comedy with a Mac, entitled 'dantealighieri@virgilio.it.

The result is a set of works in which everything coexists, past, present and future coincide, and every distance is inexorably shortened.

Finally, Veneziano took us to another room where he spoke to us about crypto NFT, which we have also discussed on our site HERE.

The NFT (non-fungible token) is a cryptographic system to provide proof of authenticity and ownership of digital art.

Giuseppe Veneziano's NFTs are transformed into short animated sequences to which sounds and noises are added.

The shot of the gun with which Snow White kills the seven dwarfs or where Mickey and Goofy shoot like the two protagonists of Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction add elements to what was previously a story represented only by a painting, still and isolated. Veneziano then amuses himself with puns with the images and the title such as the animation of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf performing oral sex on her entitled 'in the mouth of the wolf'.

Loved, appreciated, hated, criticized, polemised, and discussed, Giuseppe Veneziano is certainly an ironic and sarcastic artist, and with his way of re-proposing and reinventing works without any violence, he tries to bring people closer to art and popularise images that would otherwise remain far removed from people's sensibilities.