BOOKS Festival: celebrating art and artists through literature

BOOKS Festival: Celebrating Art and Artists through Literature

Danilo Montanari Editore, in partnership with MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna of the Musei Civici Bologna, presents the second edition of BOOKS, the festival dedicated to art books and artist publications. The event will take place at the Sala delle Ciminiere of MAMbo from Friday, May 24th to Sunday, May 26th, 2024.

Born from the idea of preserving the legacy of two essential sector events – Artelibro, the Art Book Festival held in Bologna from 2003 to 2014, and FLAT – Fiera Libro Arte Torino, an international event that animated the city of Turin from 2017 to 2019 – BOOKS positions itself in a “lateral” segment, not strictly alternative to fairs, with the aim of facilitating direct relationships, knowledge, and exchanges between artists and collectors through books as a medium, without giving up a market vocation.

For the second edition of BOOKS, the spacious Sala delle Ciminiere will host 35 exhibitors, bookstores, and publishers from the sector, both Italian and international, presenting true art book projects. Rather than traditional booths, exhibitors will have focused tables with a limited number of titles, not exceeding 100 units per exhibitor.

Within the Sala delle Ciminiere, there will be exhibition focuses highlighting the quality and history of Italian art publishing. A selection of editions and original works by Vincenzo Agnetti, Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, and Ketty La Rocca will be on display thanks to on-site devices. Among the showcased volumes are notable works such as “Machiavelli30” by Vincenzo Agnetti, “Leggere” by Giovanni Anselmo, “Classifying the thousand longest rivers in the world” by Alighiero Boetti, and “In principio erat” by Ketty La Rocca.

To enrich this edition of the festival, there will be a tribute to Andrea Pazienza in Bologna 50 years later, curated by antiquarian bookseller Paolo Tonini. The display will illustrate the creative path of the avant-garde Italian comic artist with original editions of books, magazine issues, record covers, posters, and ephemera, alongside an exhibition of books by Mario Diacono, the subject of a video interview broadcasted in the Sala delle Ciminiere.

During BOOKS, Anonima Impressori will demonstrate typographic printing with movable lead type and an eighteenth-century lever press at their location on Via San Carlo 44a, Bologna, coinciding with the opening of the exhibition “Qui non c’è niente da leggere,” curated by Veronica Bassini, on May 25th from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Additionally, guided tours of the workshop with a print on-demand demonstration are scheduled for Sunday at 3:30 pm and 4:30 pm.

The BOOKS setup also encourages social exchange, with a lounge area in the Sala delle Ciminiere hosting talks with authors and collectors around the exhibition focuses. One such talk on Andrea Pazienza fifty years later, by Vincenzo Sparagna and Paolo Tonini, is set for Friday, May 24th at 5:30 pm, enriching the festival’s three days with stimulating discussions.

Throughout the festival, MAMbo’s Educational Department will provide the audience with tools to contextualize and relate the works in the museum’s Permanent Collection to the exhibition focuses of BOOKS. Mediators will be present in the Sala delle Ciminiere for BOOKS on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm, and at the Permanent Collection on Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm and from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm.

BOOKS is curated by Danilo Montanari and Lorenzo Balbi, with a scientific committee composed of Silvia Alessandri, Mario Diacono, Liliana Dematteis, and Giovanna Pesci.