The roster of contemporary artists who, in recent years, have chosen Ascoli as the ideal stage to present their latest works continues to grow, taking advantage of the city’s beauty while simultaneously injecting new creative energy into the Picene and Roman arteries of its incomparable historic center.
In recent months, Omar Galliani, Enzo Cucchi, Giuliano Giuliani, and Antonio Marras have created site-specific installations for Ascoli Piceno, testifying to the city’s great seductive power. With its buildings sculpted from warm travertine, Ascoli has an extraordinary ability to captivate the souls of the most cultured artists, eager to reclaim a more intimate and less ephemeral creative dimension compared to what one perceives in large metropolises.
Joining this prestigious list are Andrea Benetti, proponent of the Neo-Rupestrian Art movement, and Dario Binetti, an esteemed photographer, who have collaborated in the creation of twenty-one works whose expressive essence seems to perfectly align with Ascoli’s cultural context, evoking some of the region’s archetypal elements.
Executed within the evocative Castellana Caves, which serve as the backdrop for the series dedicated to the Nuns of the Sun and the Vestal Virgins of Light, the images displayed in the striking halls of Palazzo dei Capitani transport us into the very depths of the earth. These subterranean landscapes, sculpted over millions of years by the relentless flow of water, have given rise to phantasmagorical lithic formations. The connection to travertine—so characteristic of both the territory and the urban fabric of Ascoli Piceno—is particularly evocative, especially considering that travertine itself is a rock born from water and its sediments.
These chthonic explorations by the two artists bring us into contact with solemn female figures inhabiting these lunar-like settings, symbolizing in various ways the contribution of light that pierces the subterranean darkness. Here, too, the reference to the Sibyl, who has populated the collective imagination of the Apennine hinterland for millennia, is evident. She stands as the most significant and identity-defining genius loci of the region. The still-unviolated Sibyl’s Cave and the Lake of Pilate remain testimonies to the ancient spiritual consciousness of populations that venerated and feared the natural elements as deities—forces capable of unleashing cataclysms and violent earthquakes, like those that periodically shake the earth’s depths.
In short, to borrow the words of the greatest Picene painter of the twentieth century, Osvaldo Licini, these two artists guide us “… into the realm of the mothers,” where everything began.