The Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art presents the first monographic exhibition on the work of Cesare Leonardi (Italian, b. 1935). In the course of a career spanning more than four decades Leonardi, an architect and photographer, has continuously challenged the boundary between design and artistic practice. In spite of the recognition gained by his early furniture design, most of Leonardi’s oeuvre has remained little known, even within Italy. Cesare Leonardi: Strutture, organised in close cooperation with Leonardi’s archive, sheds light on an intimate yet multifaceted body of work.
The exhibition draws from the collection of Archivio Cesare Leonardi in Modena, featuring a selection of works most of which have never been on display outside his hometown. Against the historical backdrop of Villa Croce, it explores the three broad topics that preoccupied Leonardi throughout his career—chairs, shadows, and trees.
Exhibition curator Joseph Grima said, "about five years ago, in a secondhand bookshop in Milan, I bought a book that instantly became my most cherished. L'Architettura degli Alberi by Cesare Leonardi is a poetic ode to the magnificence of trees, the life's work of an architect who was obsessed by their effortless beauty and offended by the callousness with which most architects treated their presence."
