Until September 16, a selection of 42 works by the Bolognese artist Andrea Benetti will be on display at the Montevergini Civic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Ortigia. The exhibition, titled “Symbolism in Neo-Cave Painting,” is curated by Dario Scarfì, Gregorio Rossi, and Sabrina Collina.
These 42 large-scale works highlight what can be considered a neo-symbolism, where stylized hominids, embryonic forms, and autonomous elements coexist—almost isolated in their inner essence. Andrea Benetti is taking his painting back to its origins, bringing it once again into caves and similar environments.
“In my paintings, I return to the cave art that primitive man created on rocky walls,” says Benetti, “rediscovering within ourselves that primordial, uncontaminated essence while simultaneously reestablishing a proper balance between man and the environment, between production and consumption. In the parallelism with art, symbols, strokes, and colors must once again become the protagonists of painting—bearers of the simplicity and beauty of life that they represent. In the prehistoric caves, where ‘cave artists’ traced their marks and spread their colors, everything had already been invented: figurative, abstract, symbolic, and conceptual art. My work is a tribute to the painting of cave art.”