The BPER Gallery is inaugurating its new spaces at Palazzo Barbantini-Koch in Ferrara with VANITAS. Flowers and Symbols, from Hayez to Casorati , an exhibition curated by Fernando Mazzocca and Elena Lissoni and produced in collaboration with 24 ORE Cultura.
The restoration of a historic building in the city has given rise to a new space dedicated to art, which features an original exhibition exploring the depiction of flowers in Italian art from the 19th century to the early 20th century.
Through more than 40 works, including paintings and sculptures, the exhibition traces the evolution of a genre that, from a still-life subject and decorative motif, has transformed into a means of expressing feelings, anxieties, and profound reflections on time.
The exhibition begins with the European botanical fervor and the Romanticism of Francesco Hayez —represented by significant new discoveries and previously unseen works, such as the large *Vase of Flowers* —and then expands to include the leading figures of Naturalism, Divisionism, and Symbolism, culminating in the suspended, meditative vision of Felice Casorati. The flower thus becomes an image rich in meaning, capable of conveying both beauty and fragility.
The tradition of vanitas— in which the transience of nature becomes a metaphor for the precariousness of existence—runs through the entire exhibition and intertwines not only with the great poetry of Manzoni, Leopardi, Baudelaire, D’Annunzio, and Pascoli, but also with the rediscovery of figures who had long remained in the shadows—such as the painter Amanzia Guérillot—and with the challenge of sculpture, from Vincenzo Vela to the diaphanous, contemporary marble works of Gigi Guadagnucci.
A collective dialogue between painting, sculpture, and literature that invites us to rediscover how a seemingly familiar subject can become a powerful reflection on life, time, and memory.
