28th of September 2020 Angelo Bellobono in residence on the Alps
The artist Angelo Bellobono crosses the Appenines in four legs to recount Italy’s highlands through painting.

The Linea 1201 project was a scattered residency programme by the artist Angelo Bellobono promoted by the Associazione Atla(s) association Now, curated by Visual Arts Production and produced with the contribution of Fondazione Cultura e Arte, an instrumentality of Fondazione Terzo Pilastro – Internazionale, chaired by Professor Emmanuele F. M. Emanuele.

Between summer and autumn 2020, Angelo Bellobono began a travelling residence programme setting off from his headquarters in Rome and passing through the Apennines in four legs in order to investigate and recount Italy’s highlands through art, in conversation with other artists, experts and devotees.  Along the route the artist produced a new pictorial series in which the en plein air practice of the great nineteenth century painters was the key to narrate hidden Italy and promote the idea of slow cultural tourism which has inevitably become more urgent to foster.      A book edited by NOS, gathering reflections on the experience and an account of the landscape, was published at the end of the project by viaindustriae publishing house. In this regard, the public events organized at each stopover such as excursions and workshops were of central importance to allow people to share their views with the artist.

With regard to the importance of the project, Professor Emmanuele F. M. Emanuele, affirmed, “The relationship between art and the landscape – especially in a country like ours endowed with an exceptional biodiversity – the result of thousands of years of history during which the different civilizations and cultures that succeeded and intersected each other in its structure constituting its cultural identity, is something valuable that really must be enhanced.  This is why Fondazione Cultura e Arte, embraced Angelo Bellobono’s project, which during this post-health emergency period assumes the added value of totally sustainable art that everybody may enjoy outdoors, with no restrictions arising from the COVID-19 safety protocols.  The route traced by Linea 1201is important too, moving from the Basilicata region to Bologna, passing through Amatrice, a place of great symbolic value, in a kind of ideal cultural link between North and South that unravels along the Apennines, the object of research and artistic representations that draw on the experience of the great nineteenth-century vedutisti.”

Although Linea 1201 had been in the pipeline for some time, it started in coincidence with the reopening after the Covid-19 crisis with the intent of cherishing and following up on several considerations that emerged during the lockdown period on issues such as isolation and borders, the relationship with the landscape and environment, as well as the changes to our approach to walking and relationships and, last but not least, to the exclusive ways of visiting mountainous regions. The number "1201" in the title of the programme represents the length (in km) of the mountain range, from the southern tip of the Aspromonte in Calabria to Monte Maggiorasca in Liguria. Bellobono commented "The highlands need a pact of mutual belonging dictated by the body and the efforts it makes to experience them in a sustainable, productive and visionary way." Looking at a landscape from a distance and painting it without encountering and passing through it, represents an impression, a more or less virtuous exercise of lines and sketches. When we do pass through it, the landscape disintegrates before our eyes and is recomposed with our senses, steps and bodies. Imagination and memory merge.” (Angelo Bellobono).

Con Linea 1201, l’artista ha proseguito un’indagine già avviata sulle aree rappresentative del Mediterraneo, pensato come un grande “lago di montagna” incastonato tra le vette che lo incorniciano e di cui la dorsale appenninica rappresenta metaforicamente una nave che lo attraversa. Questa linea altalenante, che unisce le cime nel corso di 1201 km, fu già interamente percorsa a piedi da Bellobono nell’estate 2018, quando l’artista dedicò un mese a percorrere in “salita e discesa” ognuna delle vette più alte per raccoglierne le terre diverse, simboli delle loro identità differenti, per farne poi un quadro cui diede il nome di “Monte Appennino”, quindi esposto in occasione della sua mostra personale presso AlbumArte (16.1-28.2.2019, Roma).
“Guardare un paesaggio da lontano e dipingerlo senza incontrarlo e attraversarlo, rappresenta un’impressione, un esercizio di linee e macchie più o meno virtuoso. Nel momento in cui lo si attraversa il paesaggio si disintegra alla vista e si ricompone con i nostri sensi, i nostri passi, il nostro corpo. Immaginazione e ricordo si fondono”. (Angelo Bellobono)

Curated by NOS Visual Arts Production, Linea 1201 is part of the research pathway pursued by the curators of the agency of artistic productions, Elisa Del Prete and Silvia Litardi, exclusively in the context of the Italian province. In response to the reopening after the state of emergency that Italy experienced in recent months, Linea 1201 has proposed to restart, focusing on artistic practice and its aesthetic and generative strength.

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Over the course of five months the residency programme stopped at the four ‘Base Camps’ selected by the artist as significant places of geological diversity and their characteristic geographic and symbolic positioning.

The first leg took place from the 22nd to the 28th of June at the Capanna Moulin on the top of Monte Marrone in the Mainarde massif between Lazio and Molise, which from June to September will stop at four “Base Camps” .

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