Aurelio Amendola. MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas

BUILDING TERZO PIANO presents, from March 19th to 22nd, 2025, Aurelio Amendola. The exhibition is in dialogue with the fourteenth edition of MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas, which will take place from March 20th to March 23rd, 2025, and in which BUILDING is participating precisely with a monographic exhibition on Aurelio Amendola (Pistoia, 1938). The event stands as an ideal continuation of the selection of photographs by the Maestro that BUILDING is offering at the fair. In the exhibition at BUILDING TERZO PIANO, the artist focuses on three great masters of the past: Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Antonio Canova (1757-1822) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). His photographic lens does not turn to portraits of the artist, but confronts the works directly, sinking into the bodies of these marble deities, returning them alive and present before us
Each shot becomes a silent interlocution between the photographer and the work, between the human eye and the marble. Amendola interrogates the material, tries to capture its breath, its internal vibration. In doing so, this dialogue between ancient and contemporary is embodied in acts of interpretation that break the static nature of sculpture, animating it with a new spirit.
The monographic booth that BUILDING presents at MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas is a selection of large-format photographs of artist portraits taken by the Maestro over the course of a decade, from 1970 to the early 1980s: an intimate and shrewd investigation of the faces that have made art history in our time, investigated through his photographic lens.
The exhibition consists of 16 photographs of great artists of the second half of the 20th century, both Italian and foreign, caught in a state of true immersion in their art, becoming the subjects of their own work. The series takes on the value of witnessing the everyday space within which these artists operated and developed their poetics. Among them, we find the likes of Alberto Burri (1915-1995), Marino Marini (1901-1980), Aldo Mondino (1938-2005), Hans Hartung (1904-1989) and Andy Warhol (1928-1987) in a moment of suspension and reflection on artistic practice.
In doing so, Amendola lays bare the soul of his models and searches for the liaison that unites and confuses the artist with his creation by playing with irony, symbolism, and visual analogies in order to return us to their most iconic essence.
In keeping with the guiding theme of this edition of MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas, Dialogues, Aurelio Amendola's work enters into a dialogue with the artists: his photographic gaze does not merely capture a moment, but becomes part of a conversation between the author and the subject, between the camera and the art itself. Amendola, with his ability to enter the artists' creative intimacy, does not impose himself as a mere witness, but becomes a silent interlocutor, a mediator between their inner world and the public.

The artist
Aurelio Amendola (Pistoia, Jan. 19, 1938), in the course of his exceptional career as an art photographer, Aurelio Amendola devoted himself intensely to contemporary themes, going so far as to collect a veritable Gallery of Portraits of the most famous masters of the 20th century, a sort of Gallery of Illustrious Men of the High Epoch, revisited with the banners of current events;
De Chirico, Pomodoro, Schifano, Lichtenstein, Warhol, also frequenting Manzù, Fabbri, Ceroli, Vangi, Kounellis, Pistoletto, Parmiggiani, Paladino, Barni, Ruffi, Mainolfi. Valuable was the association with Marino Marini and Alberto Burri, unforgettable companions on the road and in life. In parallel, Amendola stands out for famous photographs on Italian Renaissance sculptures and the classical tradition, intimately understanding their volumetries, three-dimensionality, contrasts, and offering each time a point of view avowedly deviated from the documentary approach: inspired by a tactile, emotional, sensory vision.
Amendola has also ventured into the poetics of place: the Duomo of Milan, Matera, San Galgano, the Gori Collection sculpture park, Fattoria Celle di Santomato; the Vittoriale degli Italiani, Gardone Riviera; Burri's Grande Cretto, Gibellina. His works are part of prestigious private and public collections, including Fondazione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia; GAM, Turin; Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan; MAXXI, Rome; Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Alberto Burri, Città di Castello; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. He has also received countless awards: the Cino da Pistoia Prize (1997); Il Micco (2012); Academic Diploma Honoris Causa in Visual Arts and title of Academician of Italy (2014); starred in the docufilm Obiettivo sull'arte (2015, directed by Beatrice Corti); and the Una vita per l'arte (Gaeta, 2016) award. In 2009, together with other artists, he was received in Rome by Pope Benedict XVI in the Sistine Chapel.
National and international exhibitions include: Palazzo Reale, Milan (1995); Cappelle Medicee, Florence (2007); Michelangelo Scultore, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (2012); Alberto Burri, Sapone Gallery, Nice (2014); In Atelier. Fotografie dal 1970-2014, curated by Vincenzo Trione, Museo Triennale, Milan (2014); Un'Antologia, curated by Paola Goretti and Marco Meneguzzo, Pistoia Musei, Pistoia Museums, (2021, touring; in 2022 at Castello Svevo, Bari); Lo sguardo di Aurelio Amendola fra naturalismo e astrazione, Museo Opera del Duomo, Florence (2022); Holden Luntz Gallery, Florida, Palm Beach (2023); Amendola. Burri, Vedova, Nitsch: Azioni e Gesti, Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, Città di Castello, (2023; touring).