“I start attending the lessons given by Alberto Garutti, the Painting course lecturer, but he does not teach painting as he is not a painter. He is best known for his public art installations.” This is how the main character of Jonathan Bazzi’s novel Corpi minori, a 20-year-old who desperately wants to become an artist, meets “the best teacher at Brera”.
Bazzi’s novel is just one of the books on the recommended summer reading list we are presenting in this issue of Bulletin. They are all books by writers who have dedicated a few pages to Garutti. Even if he does not play a leading role in these works, they still transmit the strength and poetry of some of his well-known works, and his great charisma as a lecturer.
In Bazzi’s Corpi minori, Garutti is a strict and serious teacher, but also a father-figure, who urges his students to express their own ideas and take responsibility for their choices. This includes confronting the judgement of others, whether it comes from fellow students or the future art world operators they will meet when they leave the Academy. The main character ends up finding a distinctly radical solution to the challenge posed by his teacher.
Cover Jonathan Bazzi, Corpi minori, pubd. in Milan by Mondadori, 2022
The second book we are recommending is Panchine. Come uscire dal mondo senza uscirne by Beppe Sebaste. This volume is a eulogy to the bench, a free, public place of rest that also plays an extremely important role in the work of Alberto Garutti. In the book, the writer recalls a conversation he had with Garutti, in which he reveals that public benches inspire in him “a beautiful idea of hospitality and welcome”. This social dimension that merges with an attentive study of the urban and rural environment is typical of some of his best-known projects. The conversation also reveals the artist’s decision to step outside the context of the museum and create poetic, artistic objects that can be used by everyone. Just like benches.
Cover Beppe Sebaste, Panchine. Come uscire dal mondo senza uscirne, pubd. in Rome by Laterza, 2008
Our third and last volume is Le aziende In-Visibili by Marco Minghetti. In this complex literary work inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the author brings together the knowhow of a hundred different figures from the worlds of economics and culture. One episode in the book (Chapter IX no. 119) is entitled ‘Gossip’ and is inspired by Storie d’amore, the famous series of photographs taken by Garutti for the Sant’Andrea Hospital in Rome on the theme of loving relationships sparked inside the hospital. Here, the artist himself suggests that: “the issue of gossip is very interesting. I am thinking of the culture handed down orally over centuries and today’s information distribution systems. Internet and blogs… are basically one big piece of gossip that is dispersed endlessly.”
Cover Marco Minghetti, Luigi Serafini, Le aziende in-visibili. Romanzo a colori, pubd. in Milan by Scheiwiller, 2008
Our reading recommendations based on the figure of Alberto Garutti are linked to the exhibition: “Piccolo Museion - Cubo Garutti. A story” staged to mark the 20th anniversary of the Cubo Garutti in the Don Bosco district of Bolzano. The work was commissioned by the Department of Italian Culture at the Autonomous Province of Bolzano and created in 2003 by the recently deceased artist Alberto Garutti (1948 - 2023).
The exhibition – currently on display at Museion Passage until 01.09.2024 – reflects on the value of public art in today’s world with a focus on the present and future of this unique piece of Bolzano architecture.
