Tag: art

The Nuovo Forno del Pane in Bologna: when food and art cross the path – Italian Cuisine

This is how the ancient bread oven, inaugurated during the First World War, was transformed into a museum and, above all, into a new interdisciplinary production center available to artists

Where once the bread to give a shred of hope and nourishment to the people of Bologna, today we try to nourish art in its younger, most unusual, most beautiful forms. In this 2020 certainly far from simple for our artists, the New bread oven of the Emilian capital – within the Mambo, the Museum of Modern Art in Bologna – is renewed once again, transforming itself not only into an exhibition space, but into a real interdisciplinary production site available to a group of creative talents. An important leap for the structure, which thus returns to its origins as a place of preparation, of creation, with art that is metaphorically mixed. And then bread.

Il Forno del Pane (Photo: Cineteca di Bologna Archive)

The history of the building

The building that now houses the MAMbo has its roots up to the early twentieth century. The first section, in particular, was built in 1915 at the behest of the Mayor of Bologna Francesco Zanardi: its original function is that of a municipal bakery and becomes essential during the years of WWI, to ensure the supply of bread to citizens and to calm the prices. In the 1940s, then, the building was expanded to house the Autonomous Consumption Authority, until its final closure in 1958.

Conversely, the transformation of the old bakery into a museum began in the second half of the 1990s. The restoration, designed by Aldo Rossi, aims to recover the structure with the utmost respect for its pre-existing architectural features. When the restoration is complete, the space is distributed over three floors, which house a conference room, a bar-restaurant, a bookshop, an educational department, exhibition rooms and the contemporary art library-newspaper library. But also the Hall of the Chimneys, which still retains the ancient fireplaces of the bakery, and which today is the beating heart of the New Forno del Pane project.

A new space for artistic production

The international explosion of the pandemic due to coronavirus led to an in-depth reflection not only on the possibility of enjoying art, but above all on the nature of the public museum institution, its function, its role for the cities and communities of reference. The Board of Directors of the Bologna Museums Institution, the Department of Culture and Promotion of the city and the related Department of the Municipality of Bologna, as well as the staff of MAMbo and its director Lorenzo Balbi, so they decided for an identity and strategic redefinition of the museum, to be undertaken through the project of the Nuovo Forno del Pane.

The building, therefore, is no longer intended only as a place of artistic enjoyment, but as a interdisciplinary production center in the round: the Sala delle Ciminiere del MAMbo is once again one cooking for the creative community, where art becomes bread for the mind and the museum turns into an oven, an incubator of creativity. A space that Bologna offers its artists to restart, to be reborn after the emergency using beauty and culture as an engine.

The selected artists

The commission chaired by Lorenzo Balbi himself – also responsible for the Modern and Contemporary Art Area of the Bologna Museums Institution, has thus selected 12 artists domiciled in the Metropolitan City of Bologna, which has been assigned a research and production space within the Nuovo Forno del Pane. In particular, these are Ruth Beraha (1986, Milan), Paolo Bufalini (1994, Rome), Letizia Calori (1986, Bologna), Giuseppe De Mattia (1980, Bari), Allison Grimaldi Donahue (1984, Middletown, USA), Bekhbaatar Enkhtur (1994, UlaanBaatar, Mongolia), Eleonora Luccarini (1993, Bologna), Rachele Maistrello (1986, Vittorio Veneto), Francis Offman (1987, Butare, Rwanda), Mattia Pajè (1991, Melzo), Vincenzo Simone (1980, Seraing , Belgium), Filippo Tappi (1985, Cesena).

A decidedly varied selection in profiles – by age and geographic origin, of course, but above all by training and expressive languages - which well represents the new inclinations traced by emerging Italian art. The hope is that the group can find in the daily experience of close comparison a further element of wealth and an opportunity for growth. For themselves, as well as for the whole community.

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Food of the soul, between rice and works of art – Italian Cuisine

Bread or rice? What is the food that represents Nutrition par excellence? For Bottura it is bread, for Carlo Benvenuto, artist, it is rice. Here is the recipe he gave us

In the July issue we talked to Carlo Benvenuto of his Metaphysical Bread, the work he created in 2015 for the Ambrosian refectory. With that image, the artist wanted to express a very universal idea, for a work that was to adorn the wall of a refectory, with all the references – sacred and profane – that the operation contained.

During the processing of the July issue, just on the occasion of the story you find on p. 90, Massimo Bottura asked Benvenuto what was his recipe for "universal nourishment": We wanted to combine the image of his work of art with the recipe for his favorite bread. Welcome, though, he replied with a rice in Cagnone a little revisited. "Of course, I recognize that bread is a more shared symbol, but faced with such a question, I wanted to be faithful to my family history," explained the artist. "For us, bread has always been a service food, while rice is what most brings me back to the values of sharing and nourishment".

Here she is recipe he sent us, in which "the simplicity of English rice is made unique and special by butter which is flavored with sage for one part and the other is left raw as in the risotto creaming, complete the Parmesan and a base of roasted chicken which restores the richness and flavor in concentration, which in traditional risotto is given by the broth ".

Our advice? Prepare the roast chicken second, so you will have a whole menu, to be completed with a salad and a dessert (you can find it on our issue on newsstands). And you can prepare the bottom to flavor the rice.

Double butter rice from Lake Maggiore

Ingredients for 4 people

320 g of risotto rice
80 g of butter
6-8 sage leaves
abundant grated Parmesan
salt – bottom of the roast chicken

Method

Boil the rice in abundant salted water. In a saucepan, melt half the butter by browning the sage. Once browned, turn off the heat. Set aside a couple of ladles of rice cooking water, add some to the butter and mix. Reserve the sage leaves. When the rice is cooked but still very al dente, pour it into the saucepan, where there is the butter with the sage, under which you will have rekindled the fire. Stir and add the cooking water until cooking is complete. Turn off the heat and stir in the remaining cold butter and Parmesan.

For the chicken bottom

Take the pan where you prepared the roast chicken, deglaze it on the flame with a little boiling water, pour the sauce into a sauce boat filtering it with a chinoise or cone strainer.

To serve

Reheat the dishes (pass them under boiling water, then dry them). Place the rice on the plates and add the sage leaves. Sprinkle with the chicken sauce or serve the sauce separately.

Carlo Benvenuto on display at Mart

Anyone wishing to find out more about Carlo Benvenuto can do so by visiting the exhibition “Carlo Benvenuto. The original", Which inaugurated the reopening of the Mart after the lockdown. A restart that exposes around 60 works by the artist, created from the nineties to today, put in dialogue with three masterpieces by De Chirico, Morandi and Guttuso, from the Mart collections. In the exhibited works one finds the metaphysics of everyday life that also characterizes the metaphysical Bread of the Refectory Ambrosiano: in them, objects of everyday life are portrayed with great fidelity but, surprisingly, they are almost abstract, universal.

From June 26 to October 18 2020
info and presales: info@mart.trento.it, www.mart.trento.it

Bread that becomes a work of art – Italian Cuisine

A photographer from Stockholm came up with the idea of carving dough into loaves and creating designs. An artistic message that wants to focus on the importance of good food

Take one loaf rustic, round and beautiful large: now turn it into a canvas to paint on! It is the idea that came to Linda Ring, a photographer from Stockholm who, with a creative mind always looking for new stimuli, began to draw on the surface of the bread. Her creations, published on Instagram, have made the rounds of social networks and have provided her with some professional collaborations.

Bread becomes a work of art

The drawings are made by engraving the pasta of the bread before cooking, sometimes directly, sometimes following a sketch drawn first on a sheet. L'engraving the most classic one we are used to seeing is the cross-shaped one, which in addition to being the sign of the blessing of bread, is a way to give the dough a way to expand in cooking, choosing the direction in which it will do so.

The engravings by Linda Ring instead transform the bread in works of art they depict portraits and natural subjects. Linda is a creative, but her inspiration also comes from previous work in an auction house and the natural landscapes in which she grew up, those of the Stockholm archipelago.

A nice bread, but also good

Linda is not only attentive to the aesthetic aspect of bread, but also to quality of the food. It is she herself who prepares the loaves with flour from a small mill of Stockholm, always experimenting with different types, and with natural yeast. In fact, his message is not only artistic, but concerns the importance of making good bread, starting from the way in which the wheat is grown, and then taking all the time necessary for the leavening and cooking. Our impression is that his shots seem to tell us: "Take life slowly, choose carefully what you eat, surrounded by simple things, nature and affections".

Linda does not sell bread because, she explains, she is not a baker and cannot produce large quantities of bread, but she likes to prepare it for share it with the family or to wear like gift to friends. And doesn't a hot, fragrant and designed loaf seem the simplest and most beautiful gift in the world?