From 26 October 2024 to 16 March 2025, the Dino Zoli Foundation in Forlì will host an exhibition dedicated to the art of Italian tapestry from 1950 to today.
The exhibition Trame esplorative: un viaggio attraverso l’arazzo – curated by Nadia Stefanel, director of the Dino Zoli Foundation, and promoted by Dino Zoli Textile and the Dino Zoli Foundation – is an important opportunity to highlight how this textile art, traditionally seen only from a decorative point of view, has become over time a form of expression that has been able to interweave histories, cultures and techniques.
Monica Zoli, vice-president of the Dino Zoli Group, says: ‘Words such as thread, weft, warp, woven fabric are often used to evoke suggestions of paths, ideas, relations, cohabitation and connections. An ancient technique meets contemporaneity through art, and together, they give life to representations of emotions’.
The concept of the exhibition is perfectly in line with the philosophy of Dino Zoli Textile, the parent company of the Dino Zoli Group, which produces fabrics of excellence for upholstering upholstered furniture for various sectors, including Interior Design, Contract, Nautica and Hotellerie.
Nadia Stefanel, curator of the exhibition, writes: “Tapestry, as a contemporary visual language, tells us of textile experimentation and innovation, of collaborations between artists and craftsmen, between tradition and modern experiments, in dialogue with contemporary artistic trends (primarily abstractionism) and industrial design. A path of research that crosses Italy from Lombardy (Arazzeria di Esino Lario and Arazzeria di Elio Palmisano) to Abruzzo (Arazzeria Pennese), to Sardinia (Studio Pratha), with some European incursions (Ateliers Pinton), proposing a moment of reflection on identity and tradition.
The journey through the tapestries represents a unique opportunity to understand how art and craftsmanship come together in a collaborative creative process, involving some of the most important masters of the second half of the 20th century such as Sonia Delaunay, Gino Severini, Alexander Calder, Afro and Piero Dorazio, designer Nathalie du Pasquier or stylists such as Antonio Marras and contemporary artists such as Omar Galliani, Maurizio Donzelli, Stefano Arienti, Loredana Longo and Sissi, who have approached tapestry as a form of expression. The exhibition concludes with the tapestry Metapolis, created by Francesca Müller , which combines the artisanal complexity of weaving with graphics inspired by artificial intelligence.
A journey through Italy that not only celebrates textile processing techniques, but also invites us to reconsider a rich and varied cultural heritage, bearing witness to a tradition that continues to evolve and renew itself over time, fostering deep connections between artist and audience. Under the patronage of the Municipality of Forlì and Confindustria Romagna, the exhibition can be visited with free admission from 26 October to 16 March 2025 at the headquarters of the Dino Zoli Foundation in Forlì (V.le Bologna 288).
For more information visit www.fondazionedinozoli.com.
