TUTTI GATTI

Exhibition closing event
Finissage 10.01.25 ore 18-21

FOGLIO SALA

TUTTIGATTI (Allcats)

Collective exhibition of 29 artists
Cured by Claudia Ponzi,
in collaboration
with Ilaria Centola, Ilaria Introzzi, Michela Ongaretti and Antonella Mazza

The exhibition will be open from 7.01.25 to 14.01.25 from Tuesday to Saturday 14-19.30 other times by appointment

Text by Antonella Mazza
As soon as you cross the threshold of the Art Gallery Finestreria, you quickly get the feeling that you are being scrutinized. There is a presence, an invisible observer to monitor every step and listen to every speech. A fluid black spot that moves in the white space. It’s Fiore, the cat mascot of the gallery.
The affection for this plump little feline inspired the exhibition TUTTIGATTI, 29 artists, curated by Claudia Ponzi, in collaboration with Ilaria Centola, Ilaria Introzzi, Michela Ongaretti and Antonella Mazza, from November 12 to December 20, 2024.
The collective exhibition presents a variety of small cats, very different from each other: more abstract and more realistic, elegant and funny. During the inauguration, the Fiore kitty will be peeking out in the quietest moments. There will also be Cato, another cat friend, with his trainer Claudia from Miao School.
The iconography of the cat with its mystery has had over the millennia an immense variety of meanings. In ancient Egypt these animals were literally worshipped as a divinity, embalmed and represented with refined sculptures. The goddess Bastet, with a woman’s body and cat’s head, was the goddess of fertility. In Greece and Rome it was believed that the cat was sacred to Diana, goddess of the hunt and lunar deity, we also find it in Pompeii in the mosaics of the House of the Fauno. In the patriarchal Middle Ages he was associated with witch hunting for his independent disposition and love of darkness.
In the Christian iconography it symbolized laziness and lust. There are legends that tell that the Virgin loved cats, which were soon reintroduced into families for their valuable work of exterminating the granaries from mice. We find cats painted with very different meanings in the Utima Cena by Pietro Lorenzetti, in San Girolamo in the studio of Antonello da Messina, the Madonna del gatto by Leonardo da Vinci, the Cenacolo di San Marco by Domenico Ghirlandaio, the Madonna della gatta by Giulio Romano, the Annunciation of Recanati by Lorenzo Lotto. Until you get to Goya, Manet’s Olympia, Renoir, Le chat noir the famous Montmartre club symbol of bohemian life in Paris and then Klee, Giacometti, Ligabue.
The cat is now the protagonist, the undisputed subject of the works exhibited here. The exhibition is born from the combination of works by artists who have already worked with the gallery: Pietro Capogrosso, Piermario Dorigatti, Luisa Elia, Debora Fella, Paola Fonticoli, Patrizia Giambi, Alessandra La Marca, Nataly Maier, Adriano Moneghetti, Leo Ragno, Saverio Tonoli, Mariangela Zabatino and the works selected by the open call TUTTIGATTI: Martina Antonioni, Gennaro Cicalese, Martina Cinotti, Alberto De Braud, Pilar Dominguez, Igor Grigoletto, Alek Lonati, Mina Palma Massaro, Giorgia Oldano, Mariella Ghirardani, Muia Parapini, Valeria Papova, Francesco Quadri, Manuel Succi, Ginevra Tarabusi, Roberto Urso, Ellen Vanholen. Within the exhibition we find works performed with very different techniques: almost monochromatic abstractions and drawings with more or less defined forms, that through plays of lights and shadows let us glimpse small felines. Painting, drawing, engraving, glass, poetry. The abstract graphic signs seem to recall their scratches, the painting tries to capture their movement in constant oscillation between the lightning shots of the hunt, the relaxed nonchalant slowness and the mysterious fixity. Reflections that lead us to investigate the attitudes that cats generate in their ‘humans’: joy, care, patience, cuddles, waiting, play. TUTTIGATTI celebrates love and mutual connection between the cat and his ‘human’.

“Come beautiful cat, come on my loving heart;
Hold back your claws
That I sink into your beautiful eyes of agate and metal”
Charles Baudelaire

29 different points of view, like pieces of a puzzle, show us the complex and varied identity of the cat, making us aware of love and respect towards it.
The diversity of its character is evident from the variety of approaches and the multiplicity of techniques which coexist in harmony. The collective strength was the fundamental element for the realization of a real journey inside a new world, a new life compared to ours: that of the feline.
In the exhibition we find artists who have expressed the complex personality of the cat through the intertwining of chaotic, crude and instinctive signs, which bring us back to his nature as a hunter, his speed and shrewdness. Others, using the expressiveness of color, have staged the liveliness and playfulness of the feline, but also its intense love and warmth towards man. Others again have resorted to the use of flat surfaces, talking about the cat as a gentle and patient animal.
The gentle linearity of the drawing’s scratch, which coincides with the course of its curves, is a mirror of characteristics such as composure, fidelity, balance and elegance.
Walking through the halls, you can almost hear a purr, and in front of some works it seems to be able to sink your hand into the soft fur.
And when even the representation is not able to fully express the essence of the cat, some artists have turned to the word, in which the presence of the animal manifests itself as a sensation, triggering in the viewer the vision of a feeling. In this case not thanks to the view, but to the imagination, leading us to fantasize about the love between two cats that intertwine and merge in their own shadows.
The feline is represented since the beginning of art, it has been the object of worship and in Egypt was even considered an intermediary between the human and the divine. The reason has always been one: the attraction by man towards the aura of mystery of the cat, which envelops and preserves an ancient and silent sacredness.
Its gaze is deep, charming, it denotes wisdom and power; his presence is stealthy and seems to hide a secret. Independence is inherent in him, making him even more occult and enigmatic. The artists respect these characteristics, they do not try to reveal the impenetrable and dark nature of the feline, but welcome it.
Text by Cecilia Severini