FEDERSPITZE SCHNABELTÄNZE - BALLETTI DI BECCHI IN PUNTA DI PENNA

On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Paul Flora, South Tyrolean, North Tyrolean and Trentinian artists respond to his oeuvre. Works by Patrick Bonato, Katharina Cibulka, Laurina Paperina, Petra Polli, Josef Rainer and Benjamin Zanon are shown in combination with works by Paul Flora from the Museum´s collection.

Throughout his life, Paul Flora commented on the prevailing Zeitgeist with a pointed pen, exploring the languages of caricature, writing and drawing. The invited artists pick up artistic, humorous and discursive aspects of Flora's work and graft them onto their own artistic practice. In dialogue with Flora´s drawings and prints from the Stadtmuseum Bruneck, the newly conceived works were first presented in the Villa Schindler in Telfs and are now shown in Bruneck on the occasion of  Flora's 100th birthday.

The Genre of Caricature and Comics resonates in the works by the Trentinian artist Laurina Paperina and the Innsbruck based artist Patrick Bonato, whose father also comes from Trentino. Both share the technique of the story board as a narrative to describe their present with a multiform, expressive and colorful repertoire of figures. Laurina Paperina combines ubiquitous comic figures with Flora's signature Venetian masks, subliminally reminding us of the past two years of the pandemic.

Patrick Bonato fictitiously interweaves Flora's biography with his own in three large-format drawings. As an example: both were obsessed with drawing birds as children, both had/have fathers from South Tyrol/Trentino, and both used to live in the Hungerburg.

A particular biographical reference between Flora and the family of Katharina Cibulka - née Fiegl – found the artist in her own family archive. Her grandfather, like Flora's father, came from the Venosta Valley and they both met in Innsbruck during the interwar period. Through diary notes of the grandfather, memories of the father and the writings of Flora, the artist vividly recounts the lifelines of both families, since, among other things, Flora's grandfather was a Latin teacher and he also drew him.

Narration is also taken up by Bressanone artist Josef Rainer, who brings to life grand storytellers in  four ceramic busts - "Cold skin- Albert Sanches Pinol," "War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy," "Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift" and "Jule Verne's Tribulations of a Chinaman in China."

The political realm of experience of drawing as slogan and plea, articulates the Bolzano based artist Petra Polli in her work, quoting the technique of graffiti in various ways.

In quiet restrain, Benjamin Zanon bundles the ritual character and process of drawing, just as Flora let his drawings oscillate by means of hatching and contrasts. Guided by Flora's world of figures, Zanon develops a filigree microcosm that leaves us in awe.

 

Karin Pernegger, curator and initiator of the exhibition