The “Fortuny and Wagner” exhibition at Palazzo Fortuny examines the influence of Wagner’s music and art on the visual arts in Italy. Mariano Fortuny in primis was an exponent of “wagnerism“, but the exhibition also boats the contribution of an Italian contemporary artist, Mirco Marchelli. He presents in this occasion a musical installation and a series of paintings and sculptures entitled “Silent scene for low clouds“.

The exhibition is held principally on the third floor of Palazzo Fortuny, in what is generally known as the Palazzo’s “attic”. This is the part of a “home” in which the memories of past lives traditionally collect, and the same holds true for the home and studio of Mariano Fortuny, where it constitutes a store-room of various materials, selected by Marchelli to compose his works: torn sheets of paper with faded writing, dusty fabrics, boxes and photographs shaped and recomposed with an order of musical balance into new forms.

In this atmospheric, light-filled space, the artist offers a new musical installation in tribute to “Wagner and Fortuny” entitled “Low clouds“. A large cylinder with black sides becomes a “sound box” for 12 trombones and 12 flutes that create a dialogue in counterpoint, while large polychrome paintings and benches in a “silent” conversation with books, boxes and canvases immersed in wax and shaped as new packages, as waxed outlines of forms, relive and transform the past, offering an unusual side to the exhibition.

Following the exhibition as it unfolds, one comes to the top floor, and alongside Mariano’s works and the velvet works and boxes of the Wagnerian cycle, a number of small wax and canvas items “timidly” make their appearance. They are joined by stools with mysterious packages tied in string, slender ceramics with luminous transparencies that go to create the link rounding off the exhibition’s inquiry into the influence of Wagnerism, in which all artistic forms, music above all, strive towards the same goal: the “total work of art”.