Promoted by Roma Capitale, Assessorato alle Politiche Culturali e della Comunicazione – Sovraintendenza ai Beni Culturali
curated by MACRO - CRDAV (Centro Ricerca e Documentazione Arti Visive)
in collaboration with Archivio Mario Ballocco e Paolo Bolpagni
With the technical support of Cassettiere MACRO: OTTART Prodotti per l’Arte
Image: Mario Ballocco, Homines impauriti dal sole nero, 1946-1950. Courtesy Archivio Mario Ballocco, Milano
On display, for the first time, “Homines” by Mario Ballocco: disturbing, cruel and desperate, stylized entities, that embody the dynamics of anthropological and social aspects of our daily lives: falling in love, conflicts, submissiveness, betrayal, cultural and political commitment and much more.
The 51 drawings on display were made in the context of the second half of the forties, after the terrible and traumatic experience of the war. Years in which Mario Ballocco, was frantically searching for authenticity and “truth”, and thus he left Italy for Argentina, where he met Lucio Fontana and tried new paths.
Ballocco’s Homines are disturbing stylized entities, cruel and desperate in their huge empty eyes, mouths wide open to gnash their teeth threateningly. The author reveals the passions and the deepest motives of action of people and of the masses, thus composing a gallery full of sardonic humors. This peculiar Odyssey represents the pessimism of the great moralists, together with a devastating irony, and a deep ethical impulse, translated into an expressionistic tilt.