Carlo Levi and Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, friendship on display in Lucca

The relationship between the art critic Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti (Lucca, 1910 – Florence, 1987) and the writer and painter Carlo Levi (Turin, 1902 – Rome, 1975) is told by “A friendship between painting, politics and literature” , the new exhibition to be held at the Ragghianti Foundation in Lucca from Friday 17 December to 20 March 2022 to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Centro Studi Ragghianti Foundation. In addition to the documents, the exhibition presents numerous drawings and a core of about eighty paintings by Carlo Levi, to reconstruct not only the structure of the 1948 monograph and the 1967 and 1977 exhibitions curated by Ragghianti, but also the circle of intellectuals and friends to which the two belonged – Eugenio Montale, Giovanni Colacicchi, Paola Olivetti, Aldo Garosci and others -, with the addition of the portraits of characters they both had esteem, such as Italo Calvino and Frank Lloyd Wright. Created in collaboration with the Carlo Levi Foundation. in Rome, curated by Paolo Bolpagni, Daniela Fonti and Antonella Lavorgna, the exhibition investigates a topic that has so far been little considered by historiography and academic studies. The friendship between Ragghianti and Levi, fundamental for both, intensified in Florence, during the Nazi occupation, through the common political militancy in the Resistance, especially after Levi, in 1941, found a clandestine refuge in Anna Maria Ichino’s house in the square. Pitti, where he wrote his best-known novel, “Christ stopped at Eboli”, to which a section of the exhibition is dedicated. However, it is not only politics – in the ranks of the Action Party – that unite them, but also the intense discussion on contemporary art issues and a shared sensitivity for the country’s artistic heritage. It should be remembered their joint intervention, with the architect Giovanni Michelucci, after the Nazis had blown up five bridges in Florence, to avoid the demolition of the Torre di Parte Guelfa in Ponte Vecchio, a ‘rescue’ then implemented by the command ally. Ragghianti’s interest in Levi as a painter can be traced back to 1936, when he included him in his article dedicated to contemporary Italian painting; in 1939 he reviewed the exhibition in New York in the magazine “La Critica d’Arte”. Certainly the strongest moment of their attendance takes place during the days of the formation of the Tuscan Committee of National Liberation and the direction of the “Nazione del Popolo”, and when Levi, immediately after the liberation of Florence, becomes a member of the commission for the reconstruction of the center historical city. This intensification of their relationship is also reflected in the sharing of the artistic discourse, so much so that Levi’s personal exhibition at the Galleria dello Zodiaco in Rome in 1946 was presented by Ragghianti himself; and it is always Ragghianti who proposes the first historicization of the figure of Carlo Levi in ​​1948, through the publication of a ‘catalog’ of Levian’s work, in which the paintings created from 1923 to 1947 are dated and cataloged. with a presentation by Ragghianti, who still remains an essential point of reference for studies on Levi. Among other things, the book also includes the text by Levi Fear of painting, recently returned to the attention of scholars as well as the more extensive reflection Fear of freedom, written in 1939, on the crisis of European society, today as current as ever. In the following years the two do not fail to meet, in Rome or Florence, as soon as circumstances allow. Ragghianti never misses the opportunity to enhance Levi’s artistic production: clear examples are his inclusion in the great 1967 exhibition “Modern Art in Italy 1915-1935” and the impressive selection of works from the anthology set up in Florence after the artist’s death (“Carlo Levi stops in Florence”, 1977). It is therefore, for the Ragghianti Foundation, a strongly identifying exhibition, ideal to seal the important anniversary of the institution’s fortieth anniversary. they reconstruct, in addition to the events and circumstances of their friendship, the identity knots of this relationship, the theoretical issues of a historical-artistic nature, and other points of interest common to the two for an action to be carried out within the framework of an arts policy . The exhibition and the catalog offer a testimony, through works of art, letters, documents, photographs and films, of the meaning of the friendship between Ragghianti and Levi, also in the light of their cultural background. An interesting and new aspect presented by the exhibition is that of the two’s common interest in cinema: Levi works as a screenwriter and set designer for some films, draws the manifesto of “Accattone” by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and from the 1950s onwards, in Rome, he becomes a portraitist coveted by many characters of the world of cinema, from Silvana Mangano to Anna Magnani, from Franco Citti to Pasolini himself: all these portraits are present in the exhibition, together with those of Ragghianti and their mutual friends, such as Eugenio Montale and Carlo Emilio Gadda. Ragghianti, as well as in that of the Carlo Levi Foundation in Rome, there are documents that concern in a special way the historical-artistic and critical sphere, which was at the center of this friendship. In Lucca there is a substantial nucleus of letters starting from 1943 and lasting until 1971, and typewritten texts by Ragghianti on Levi; in the Roman archive autographs of Ragghianti’s monograph are preserved, accompanied by annotations for the drafting of the volume intended by Levi for his curator, as well as unpublished photographs. Many of these materials are exhibited in the first and last room. In the catalog, published by the Edizioni Fondazione Ragghianti Studi sull’Arte, there are texts by Roberto Balzani, Paolo Bolpagni, Daniela Fonti and Antonella Lavorgna. (by Paolo Martini)