Opus Novum #6: Luisa Lambri

Luisa Lambri, L'Esprit Nouveau

Every year since 2019, Arte Fiera has commissioned a well-known Italian artist to create a new work to be presented at the Fair. So far, Opus Novum (as the series is named) has commissioned works from Flavio Favelli (2019), Eva Marisaldi (2020), Stefano Arienti (2021), Liliana Moro (2022), and Alberto Garutti (2023).

In 2024, the commission has gone to Luisa Lambri, an internationally famous Italian artist whose medium is the photographic image. Known mainly for her images of modernist architecture, so essential that they approach abstraction, Lambri does not photograph architecture any more than Morandi painted cups and bottles: just like the Bolognese master, she investigates relations among space, time, and light by means of an engrossing series of variations.

For Arte Fiera, Lambri focuses on two buildings symbolizing Bolognese architecture in the ‘70s: the Church of Santa Maria Assunta (Assumption of Mary) in Riola di Vergato (BO), Alvar Aalto’s only permanent work in Italy, completed in 1978, and the Padiglione de L’Esprit Nouveau, the replica of a temporary architectural work by Le Corbusier from 1920s, built in 1977 at the entrance to the Fair District. From Aalto’s church, Lambri presents a few unpublished images; from the Padiglione de L’Esprit Nouveau she has taken suggestions for selecting other shots from various periods of her career, which, along with the unpublished photos, will form an exhibition in the pavillon entitled L’Esprit Nouveau.