Terra Animata. Visioni tra arte e natura in Italia (1964-2023). Curated by Paola Bonani and Francesca Rachele Oppedisano. Mattatoio – Padiglione 9A, Rome. 29.03 – 27.08.2023

The exhibition Terra Animata. Visioni tra arte e natura in Italia (1964-2023), curated by Paola Bonani and Francesca Rachele Oppedisano, brings together some examples of contemporary artists who have worked on the relationship between art, creativity, aesthetics, nature and man.

The exhibition covers a period from the 1960s through to the present day. During the 1960s, artists made a radical breakthrough in the traditional boundaries of the works of art, including materials taken directly from the real world and in some cases focusing all their research on our relationship with nature and its processes of transformation. During the 1970s, agriculture and landscape became the subject of specific artistic practices, with the intention of investigating more human dimensions of production and spaces of harmony with the environment.

At the exhibition, which includes the participation of Bruna Esposito, Giosetta Fioroni, Pino Pascali, and Giuseppe Penone, among others, Baruchello was invited with Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. 1973-’81, a continuous experiment that constitutes one of the fields in which the artist has worked most: his relationship with nature, the environment, vegetables and animals.

The space dedicated to Baruchello includes: three showcases/archive Agricola Cornelia (1-2-3) with different materials, documents, organic and inorganic objects, organized according to three themes (food, politics, and animal and vegetable), the work Agricola Cornelia. Quaestio de aqua et terra (enamels on aluminum in two elements), the series Progetto Kanak (enamels on cardboard in two elements, Magie Idrauliche, Magie Politico – Sindacali), and the work Il referente (enamels on cardboard).

An example of the artist’s filmic production during the years of Agricola Cornelia S.p.A. is the film Il grano (1975), which documents with a fixed shot every day for one minute a day the different stages of wheat ripening in varying weather conditions on the field located in Via di Santa Cornelia (Rome).