Riccardo Dalisi: Radicalmente
MAXXI, Rome
10 November 2023 – 3 March 2024
Riccardo Dalisi con un "robot-caffettiero", anni Ottanta
Foto di Ugo Magliacano
Courtesy Archivio fotografico Alessi
Riccardo Dalisi in his studio, Naples
Photo by Fulvio Cutolo
Courtesy Archivio Riccardo Dalisi
MAXXI presents a major retrospective dedicated to RICCARDO DALISI (Potenza 1931 – Naples 2022), a year after his death.
Riccardo Dalisi was one of the most multifaceted Italian designers of recent decades. He was unconventional, revolutionary, and hard to classify. Moving freely between architecture and design, art and craftsmanship, participation and social engagement, academic research, and popular traditions, he explored paths and methods that, though often misunderstood, stand out as ground-breaking today, when facing the great challenges of our times as far as design is concerned.
Pavone chair designed for Zanotta in 1981
Courtesy Zanotta SpA
Mariposa bench designed for Zanotta in 1984
Courtesy Zanotta SpA
The MAXXI exhibition presents Riccardo Dalisi's work for the first time in its extreme diversity and vastness. From creative workshops with children in Naples (those in Rione Traiano are depicted in a series of photographs by Mimmo Jodice) to his revolutionary work in the field of design (such as ultra-poor design, characterized by poor techniques and recycled materials, including sculptures, lamps, and tin objects created by migrant laborers and unemployed people). From built architecture (such as the Borsa Merci in Naples, created with Michele Capobianco and Massimo Pica Ciamarra in 1964, or the "creative restoration" interventions in the Irpinia villages struck by the 1980 earthquake) to imagined architecture with visionary, impossible projects, utopian plans, and ironic yet provocative drawings that, as a whole, evoke a surreal, poetic, and critical world. The exhibition also presents the artistic revival of popular culture and tradition, with paintings and sculptures, often in large format, where characters of Neapolitan and Mediterranean culture are brought to life.
Tecnica povera, 1973
Sedia in cartapesta, 1973
Courtesy Archivio Riccardo Dalisi
La caffettiera-vestale, Golfo di Napoli, 1985
Archivio Fotografico Alessi
Pifferaio Magico / Pied Piper, Rame e verderame /
Copper and verdigris, 2015
Photo by Fulvio Cutolo, 2016
Courtesy Archivio Riccardo Dalisi
Also exhibited for the first time is the Sedia del cece (Chickpea Chair), a series of drawings that Dalisi asked from Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Ettore Sottsass, Enzo Mari, Bruno Munari, Paolo Portoghesi, Superstudio, Archizoom, Zziggurat, 9999, Aldo Rossi, Franco Purini, Franco Raggi, Ugo La Pietra, Gae Aulenti, Hans Hollein, and many others. It is inspired by a small chair made by a Neapolitan girl using scrap wood and a clothespin, with a chickpea laid on it.
Among his most famous works is the reinterpretation of the Neapolitan coffee maker, the result of research carried out between 1979 and 1987 for the Alessi company, awarded the Compasso d'Oro (“Golden Compass”). It was conducted with the craftsmen of Rua Catalana in Naples and Alessi technicians in Piedmont, generated, in addition to a model that went into production, hundreds of objects halfway between a coffee maker and a puppet, in which functional research, anonymous design, and the ritual dimension of coffee merge into the forms of "Totocchi" (Totò + Pinocchio), warriors, knights, robots, Pulcinella, and other fairy-tale and mythological characters.
Sketch realised for publication
“Riccardo Dalisi Decrescita. Architettura della nuova innocenza”
Corraini editore, 2006
Courtesy Archivio Riccardo Dalisi
Through drawings, sketches, furnishings, embroidery, objects, books, sculptures, paintings, photographs, archive documents, films, and other materials, the radical and revolutionary nature of the "Dalisi method" is revealed. Curator Gabriele Neri writes, "By exalting interdisciplinary trespassing, the overturning of the concept of the author, the 'creative disorder,' irony, and play, the potential of residue and dross, Dalisi fought to reaffirm the 'tolerant strength of the community sense, for which everyone, even the least efficient and the outcast, is useful, necessary.' His work hovers between utopia and reality and transforms what we thought were marginal themes and territories into pivotal points of discussion and engagement, especially in times of crisis that force us to rethink our relationship with the project and the world."
Non solo pensiero, 1997
Courtesy Archivio Riccardo Dalisi
Ultrapoverissimo, latta cucita e fil di ferro /
sewn tin and wire, Naples, 2003
Foto di Fulvio Cutolo, 2005
The exhibition also highlights the fruitful interactions between Riccardo Dalisi and artists, designers, architects, and critics, including Mimmo Jodice (to whom MAXXI pays tribute with the exhibition of a core of images from the Mediterraneo series at the Archive Center), Alessandro Mendini, Giancarlo De Carlo, Massimo Pica Ciamarra, Mimmo Paladino, Ettore Sottsass, and many others.
His work blossomed in the cultural and artistic climate of Naples in the sixties and seventies. It is the expression of a "Mediterranean" nature resistant to a homogenizing, disastrous modernity. However, it has always drawn from much broader influences, both geographically and disciplinarily—pedagogy, semiotics, linguistics, sociology, theatre, etc.—which the exhibition aims to highlight.
The setting-up by Novembre Studio evokes the image of an upside-down, alternative world, much like Dalisi's perspective on reality. The dreamlike figures that the master drew and sculpted over the years guide the visitor through an out-of-scale landscape, telling the story of his poetics in a thorough, radical way.
The exhibition also includes the outcomes of research conducted, starting from the traces of the Neapolitan architect, by the artist-photographer Vincenzo Castella, in collaboration with NABA - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (“New Academy of Fine Arts”), involving a group of young visual artists from the Academy. Through the displayed photographs, the plunges into the workshops of the tinsmiths of Rua Catalana, the streets of the Spanish Quarters, among the "garitte" ("watchtowers") built at Palazzo Reale, and in the buildings constructed in Ponticelli and Rione Traiano, which in the seventies were the stage for pioneering workshops conducted with children.
A book, curated by Gabriele Neri, has been published for the exhibition. It is dedicated to the "Sedia del cece" series, edited by Corraini, featuring drawings by Riccardo Dalisi, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Ettore Sottsass, Enzo Mari, Bruno Munari, Paolo Portoghesi, Superstudio, Archizoom, Zziggurat, 9999, Aldo Rossi, Franco Purini, Franco Raggi, Gae Aulenti, Hans Hollein, Ugo La Pietra, etc. The volume includes accounts by scholars and designers and an essay by the curator. Texts by Lorenza Baroncelli, Stefano Boeri, Sara Catenacci, Domitilla Dardi, Paolo Deganello, Piero Frassinelli, Claudio Gambardella, Fulvio Irace, Ugo La Pietra, Anna Maria Laville, Iolanda Lima, Gabriele Neri, Gianni Pettena, Franco Purini, Franco Raggi, Lia Rumma, Angela Tecce.
Fondazione MAXXI | Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo
Via Guido Reni, 4A - 00196 Roma
