Solo Exhibition
L'Eterna Bellezza di Capri
L'Eterna Bellezza di Capri
Guest Curator, Piero Addis
October 10th - November 20th, 2023
The Capri Island of Lynne Deutch
The island of Capri has a multi-millennial history that would not find the necessary space in this catalog to be exhaustively narrated and described.
After the Bourbon Restoration of 1815 when Ferdinand IV returned to Naples and with the name of Ferdinand I of Bourbon, became ruler of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Capri was able to emerge from the long period of lethargy that characterized those years, entering the nineteenth century with a new look.
Capri became a destination for many travelers who visited it and admired its nature and its famous corners, becoming famous all over the world.
Starting from the early twentieth century, Vladimir Lenin, Maksim Gor'kij, Marguerite Yourcenar, Friedrich Alfred Krupp, Pablo Neruda, Curzio Malaparte, Norman Douglas, and the greatest German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe. He, admiring the islands of the gulf of Naples, felt in his soul «long live the word of Homer». In his masterpiece Journey to Italy, he describes his Homeric shipwreck off Punta Masullo. Returning from Sicily, on the night of May 14, 1787, the poet crosses the mouths of Capri with his ship. Suddenly a strong disturbing wind pushes the ship towards the rocks below the Natural Arch. Panic breaks out on board, the passengers kneel and pray. Noisy shepherds descend from the mountains of the island and with their women are ready to plunder the ship.
When the divine Wolfgang is already resigned to falling under the blows of the wild roe deer, an Apollonian wind pushes the ship out to sea. Edwin Cerio (writer, engineer and naturalist of the late 1800s, from Capri) hypothesizes with subtle irony: "Are we sure that the Capri sirens are nothing more than the beautiful women of the island who lure the sailors on the rocks to then kill them and plunder the ships?"
Thus, we understand how the Homeric Anthemusa, (the current “Faraglioni”) or the flowery meadow covered by bones, becomes the island on which the Sirens lay, or Capri!
Like Goethe, so the great American artist Lynne Deutch, today offers us through these splendid images, an extraordinary cross-section of the island giving us a timeless interpretation of it.
It is not difficult to fall into the stereotype and postcard effect when dealing with such a famous place of incomparable beauty, but Deutch manages to represent what many know in a completely private and personal way. It's new.
The artist knows that photography is light, but interpreting the Mediterranean light is not just a technical question, the exposure meter, the diaphragm, but an ethical and philosophical one. It is the dazzling light that blinds Ulysses' sight, that light that makes each of us look elsewhere, towards infinity: a happy gaze, of a sweet shipwreck in the endless sea.
With these images, Lynne Deutch invites us to get lost in a space that is not just a set of geographical coordinates, scents and flavors, but a place of the soul that opens up the horizon of our heart towards beauty, that forever.
Piero Addis
Art Director
The island of Capri has a multi-millennial history that would not find the necessary space in this catalog to be exhaustively narrated and described.
After the Bourbon Restoration of 1815 when Ferdinand IV returned to Naples and with the name of Ferdinand I of Bourbon, became ruler of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Capri was able to emerge from the long period of lethargy that characterized those years, entering the nineteenth century with a new look.
Capri became a destination for many travelers who visited it and admired its nature and its famous corners, becoming famous all over the world.
Starting from the early twentieth century, Vladimir Lenin, Maksim Gor'kij, Marguerite Yourcenar, Friedrich Alfred Krupp, Pablo Neruda, Curzio Malaparte, Norman Douglas, and the greatest German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe. He, admiring the islands of the gulf of Naples, felt in his soul «long live the word of Homer». In his masterpiece Journey to Italy, he describes his Homeric shipwreck off Punta Masullo. Returning from Sicily, on the night of May 14, 1787, the poet crosses the mouths of Capri with his ship. Suddenly a strong disturbing wind pushes the ship towards the rocks below the Natural Arch. Panic breaks out on board, the passengers kneel and pray. Noisy shepherds descend from the mountains of the island and with their women are ready to plunder the ship.
When the divine Wolfgang is already resigned to falling under the blows of the wild roe deer, an Apollonian wind pushes the ship out to sea. Edwin Cerio (writer, engineer and naturalist of the late 1800s, from Capri) hypothesizes with subtle irony: "Are we sure that the Capri sirens are nothing more than the beautiful women of the island who lure the sailors on the rocks to then kill them and plunder the ships?"
Thus, we understand how the Homeric Anthemusa, (the current “Faraglioni”) or the flowery meadow covered by bones, becomes the island on which the Sirens lay, or Capri!
Like Goethe, so the great American artist Lynne Deutch, today offers us through these splendid images, an extraordinary cross-section of the island giving us a timeless interpretation of it.
It is not difficult to fall into the stereotype and postcard effect when dealing with such a famous place of incomparable beauty, but Deutch manages to represent what many know in a completely private and personal way. It's new.
The artist knows that photography is light, but interpreting the Mediterranean light is not just a technical question, the exposure meter, the diaphragm, but an ethical and philosophical one. It is the dazzling light that blinds Ulysses' sight, that light that makes each of us look elsewhere, towards infinity: a happy gaze, of a sweet shipwreck in the endless sea.
With these images, Lynne Deutch invites us to get lost in a space that is not just a set of geographical coordinates, scents and flavors, but a place of the soul that opens up the horizon of our heart towards beauty, that forever.
Piero Addis
Art Director
