Romantic Rome

The world’s sexiest city – Rome. At least according to the Sunday Times Travel Magazine. Together with Rome you find Paris, London, St Petersburg, Havana and the city of Bath. So we can conclude that founded Bath an London, and turned Rome and Paris into metropolises, they did not only knew how to conquer, construct aqueducts and assassin one another – they also knew how to make sexy cities.

Rome, according to the April edition of the Magazine, has “frothing fountains, cobbled piazzas and enough energy to launch a rocket” and is one of the “raunchiest” cities on earth. And in a proper British way the article suggests some sensual activities for visitors in Rome but not a single one of them takes place in the bedroom.

Milan

Rome is not the only Italian city to top a recently published list. According to weakly magazine the Economist, Milan is Italy’s most expensive city and the twelfth most expensive city in the world. Paris tops the list, followed by Tokyo, Oslo and Frankfurt. So the conclusion is: Rome is sexier than Paris, and cheaper, and has more bridges – we won!

Egon Schiele - Nu Assis 1910

At the Royal Palace in Milan, a much interesting exhibition on Egon Shiele (1890-1918) are opening at the moment. Schiele was regarded by many of his contemporaries as the predestined successor to Gustav Klimt, but died before he could fulfill his promise. His fascinating but not wholly admirable character is accounted for, at least in part, by his family background and upbringing. 40 paintings and works on paper by Schiele, accompanied by as many masterpieces by Klimt, Kokoschka, Gerstl, Moser and a variety of other representatives of early 20th-century Viennese culture.
The show focuses on the person Egon Schiele to reconstruct the cultural and social climate of Vienna in the early years of the 20th century, starting from the foundation of the Secession, through the expressionist trends of the next

Egon Schiele

generation, to 1918, the year that marked the end of the First World War and the death of Klimt and Schiele. A brief but intense period in which Vienna was transformed from the centre of Mitteleuropean culture to the theatre of the ruin of the old Europe.

Royal Place Milan

March 17 – June 6

Woody Allen

Maybe most know as a movie director, and actor Woody Allen is also a musician, playing with a impressive wibe the clarinet. At the moment he and his New Orleans Jazz Band, are touring Europe and will be in Italy at the end of the month.

The first concert will be on March 29th as they are playing at the Teatro Verde in Mentecatini Terme, near Florence. The day after they are on stage at the Gran Teatro Felice in Venice. The last concert lbe in Rome on March 31, at the Accademia Santa Cecilia.

Woody Allen and his New Orleans Jazz Band are playing a  quite unique mix of music

New Orleans Jazz

inspired by New Orleans jazz. Carrying a repertoire of over 1200 pieces from the 35 years of the band, the American director, with his inseparable clarinet will rise on stage  accompanied by extraordinary musicians as musical director Eddy Davis (banjo), Simon Wettenhall (trumpet), Jerry Zigmont (trombone), Conal Fowkes (piano), Greg Cohen ( bass), John Gill (drums).

L'Età della Conquista

The Romans took a lot from the Greeks and developed into their own. Especially in art. A new exhibition at the Musei Capitolini offers you an unique collection of Greek art from early Roman days.

The works comes from one of the most significant eras for the development of all western art: the period following the Greek campaigns at the end of the third century BC until the first half of the first century AD. The exhibition features imposing marble, bronze and terracotta statues including cycles and friezes as well as domestic decorative elements.

On display will be possible for the first time a comparative analysis between the immediate works of Greek artists performed at home and works created in Rome – naked bodies in poses able to deliver authoritative charisma and honor, maybe even more imposing in military clothes with armor, cloak and long scepter. Greek taste in every sphere of daily living, from the ephemeral to the substantial, paintings, sculptures, objects, architecture, Greek traces everywhere.

EVA E IL PENELLO PROIBITO

Eva e il pennello proibito – l’arte di essera donna, or Eve and the prohibited brush – The art of being a woman in English is a exhibition that opened this past weekend in Pisa, at the Castle of the Vicars of Lari - an exhibition entirely dedicated to female creativity.
This is a small, albeit qualified representative of the vast art scene of the new millennium which is much different from the last millennium.The scene’s increasingly captivated by women, not without difficulty. This exhibition is intended as a further contribution to the progress of giving women as much space on the scene as men in the art world.
40 Tuscan women will show their work, containing sculptures, painting, photographs and other forms.

The exhibition will remain open to visitors, admission free, until 5 April 2010.

Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday 15.00 – 18.00 Saturday and Sunday 10.30 – 12.30 and 15.00 – 18.00 – Closed Mondays (open on Easter Monday).

Piano stairs Milano

You have most likely seen the video of the piano shaped stair in Stockholm. The same can now be found in Milan. In one of the entrances to the mtero at Piazza del Duomo you can now run up and down to make your own tune.

Or watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nORso4Jnv4I

Steve McCurry

You do remember the picture of the young Afghan girl with eyes that burns through you, printed on the cover of National Geograpfic magazine in 1985? Most likely, it’s one of these pictures that never leaves you. The photographer, Steve McCurry has spent a lot of time in Asia and some of his pictures can been seen at the Palazzo Ragione in Milan.

But just until Sunday, February 28 is the last date this magnificent exhibition is open. If in Milan, do not miss this.

Edward Hopper - Morning Sun

This week in Rome, opened for the first time ever an exhibition of the work by Amerian painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967). The exhibition pays tribute to the entire career this one of the 20th century’s most popular and best known American artist. The exhibition presents more than 160 works, including famous masterpieces

The exhibition will be staged at the Fondazione Roma Museum, from now till June 13, 2010, then it moves on to the Fondation de l’Hermitage in Lausanne.

Aside from the 160 works on show in the Milan exhibition, where it was staged before, the Rome event will feature more of the artist’s great masterpieces, including the beautiful Self-Portrait of 1925-1930, as well as The Sheridan Theatre (1937), New York Interior (circa 1921), Seven A. M. (1948), and South Carolina Morning (1955) along with their preparatory drawings. These extraordinary paintings will complete the group of famous works exhibited in Milan, such as Summer Interior (1909), Pennsylvania Coal Town (1947), Morning Sun (1952), Second Story Sunlight (1960), A Woman in the Sun (1961) and the stunning Girlie Show (1941). The exhibition explores the whole of Hopper’s oeuvre, and all

Edward Hopper

the techniques used by an artist now viewed as a great master of the twentieth century.

Structured in seven sections according to chronological order and theme, the Italian exhibition covers Hopper’s entire oeuvre, from his education, to his years as a student in Paris, up to his “classic” and best-known period of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, closing with the large, intense images of his later years. The show explores all of the artist’s favorite techniques: oil, watercolor and etching, and devotes special attention to the fascinating relationship between his preparatory drawings and his paintings: a vital aspect of his work that up till now has not been greatly explored in the exhibitions dedicated to him.

]]> http://www.alfabookings.com/blog/2010/02/edward-hopper-on-dispaly-in-rome/feed/ 0 http://www.alfabookings.com/blog/2010/02/caravaggio-master-of-the-light/ http://www.alfabookings.com/blog/2010/02/caravaggio-master-of-the-light/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:22:29 +0000 http://www.alfabookings.com/blog/?p=591

Caravaggio

This year it is 400 years since the great artist Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio (29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), died. The city of Rome is now opening it’s second exhibition dedicated to Caravaggio. After the success of the exhibition “Caravaggio-Bacon” which ended this January, they are now opening the doors doors to a retrospective exhibition throughout his career and life, at the Scuderie Quirinale in central city.

Scrupulous and careful attention as never before , both philological and chronological: there are only certain works. Don’t miss the occasion to admire the most of short and amazing artistic life of a true genius, damned but able to “give light to darkness”, in fact like few others important in the history of art.

Caravaggio

About 100 works of exceptional elegance and sophistication to reconstruct the complexity of an arts school from which the development of modern genres of painting from Raphael. All loans come from the most important archaeological sites and museums in the world, including the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the archaeological museums of Monaco, Frankfurt, Zurich and also the Archaeological Museum of Naples, Pompei, Museo Nazionale Romano, the Vatican Museums and the Capitoline Museums Roma.

Opening hours: daily from Sunday to Thursday 10.00-20.00, Friday and Saturday 10.00-22.30.
Tickets: Website www.scuderiequirinale.it

Carnevale

Of course, the carnival is closely connected to Venice but it’s celebrated all over Italy.

Here are some useful links if you are planning to join the feast before the fast.

Rome: www.carnevale.roma.it

Florence: www.papido.it/firenze/carnevale.htm

Milan: www.milanonotte.it/carnevale_milano.htm