From cartoons to caricatures, this is how Fellini anticipated his cinematic masterpieces with his drawings
In the 1940s he supported himself by drawing caricatures, on paper he would capture scenes of life and those that he would later film on set, and he didn't stop even when the stroke that struck him at the age of 73 forced him to be hospitalized. It is an unpublished Federico Fellini, the one told by the exhibition FEDERICO FELLINI. From drawing to directing that, at the MuSa Museum in Salò (from 5 July to 31 August) , brings together about 50 drawings, cartoons and caricatures written on paper by the great director - many of which are exhibited for the first time in Italy - together with a photographic corpus, also almost unpublished, of shots that portray him on the sets of his films.
With the curatorial coordination of Elena Ledda and Francesco Grandesso, and thanks to a range of prestigious collaborations (Fondation Fellini pour le Cinéma - Sion, Switzerland, Archivio Museo Fellini di Rimini, Media Museum di Pescara, Francesca Fabbri Fellini, director and granddaughter of the great Federico, and Anna Cantagallo, who in the summer of 1993 took care of the Maestro) the exhibition documents the very close bond between the designs and the masterpieces on film that consecrated the author in the Olympus of world cinematography. Throughout the narrative there is also space for the genesis of collaborations and friendships that blossomed on the set, with artists of the caliber of Nino Rota, Nino Za and Ennio Flaiano , who contributed to defining the textual, musical and scenographic forms of his film production.
From adolescence to maturity, caricature accompanied all phases of the director's personal and professional journey. Federico Fellini was in fact only 16 years old and attending high school when the manager of the Fulgor, the cinema of the city of Rimini, commissioned him to make portraits of famous actors and people. This phase, along the way, is documented through the three examples of Caricature for Cinema Fulgor, dated 1937, Caricature by Italo Roberti (1938) and Caricature by George Murphy (1937/1938) . Even after achieving international success, drawing always constituted the initial approach to create the characters and personages of his films. Examples of these include Scene Drawing, The Passage of the Mille Miglia in the Village (for "Amarcord"), the numerous Self-Portraits and the unpublished drawings Casanova and Pinocchio, from 1982. Among the most iconic, Dream, 20 August 1984 is taken from the Book of Dreams: a diary in which the great director gave graphic form to dreams and nightmares, from the end of the Sixties until August 1990.
The dream theme also includes Dream. Mastorna's Journey and Dream. The Death of the Clown. The section also includes the drawing Testimonianza (1992) in which Nino Za - a well-known illustrator and caricaturist and Fellini's mentor - portrays the director of La Dolce Vita advancing towards an interior populated by characters. In addition to the posters and billboards of Fellini's films, the section is preceded and completed by the screening of Fellinette (2020, Animation 12 min): a short film by Francesca Fabbri Fellini in which a little girl drawn in 1971 by her uncle is the protagonist of a fairy tale set on the beach of Rimini on 20 January 2020 (the centenary of the birth of the great Maestro).
Several works on display can be traced back to Amarcord (1974), including Durante Amarcord and the three studies for the character of Volpina, played by Josiane Tanzilli, as well as one of the many shots by Pierluigi Pratulon (1924-1999) – the official photographer of Fellini's sets – portraying the director with his colleague Andrei Tarkowski during filming. The preparatory drawings for the film of the same name, directed by the director in 1976, are dedicated to Casanova , in the year that marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Venetian seducer. Alongside the three drawings of Casanova vecchio and the sketch for the “lacemaker” scene, there are photographs that immortalise Fellini on the set of the film alongside Gérald Morin, his long-time assistant and private secretary, Alberto Moravia, Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica and the actors Cicely Browne, who plays the Marchesa Durfé in the film, and Donald Sutherland in the role of the protagonist. The section also includes the emblematic drawing Test of the main character for Gian Maria which testifies how, before entrusting the role to Sutherland, Fellini had considered Gian Maria Volonté for the role of Giacomo Casanova. Drawings and photographs come from the Fondation Fellini pour le Cinéma, a cultural institution based in the Canton of Valais, created within the private collection of Gérald Morin who collected materials on the Italian director starting in 1963.
Two rooms are dedicated to the drawings made in the last period of Fellini's life, in particular during his stay in the Ferrara clinic where he was admitted following the stroke that struck him in 1993. On display is a selection of 29 sketches, drafts and scene ideas on A4 printer paper, exhibited for the first time in Italy thanks to Dr. Anna Cantagallo , a physiatrist and neurologist who treated the Maestro in the summer of 1993. The works - including Anna, the "angel" woman and Federico, Anna with the whip and Federico, Anna "the blonde" and Federico, Federico walks alone, The path line, Federico in the cable car, Federico and the triangles - show a double register. On one hand, the tests and exercises of the patient Fellini who shows difficulty in sticking to the rules and plays with signs and colors, on the other, the free drawings, where signs, colors and writing give shape to fairy-tale, grotesque illustrations, self-portraits and stories born in the wake of the doctor-patient relationship, so much so that "Doctor Anna" becomes an integral part of his repertoire of illustrated characters. A journey lasting a few months that, beyond the underlying therapeutic value, highlights the will of the great director to continue to tell his story and tell through his inexhaustible artistic vein.
repubblica
