Vette di luce. Naoki Ishikawa in the Alps

From June 23 to September 3, 2023 Accademia Carrara presents “Vette di luce. Naoki Ishikawa in the ALps”, the second exhibition projected on the occasion of Bergamo Brescia Italian Capital of Culture 2023.

On 3 October 1870 the engineer Antonio Curò, his cousin Federico Frizzoni and Pietro Medici, a stonecutter from Castione, reached the summit of the highest peak in the Presolana. On their way up, they found no traces of other humans and it was indeed this daring trio who were the first to accomplish the feat and who measured the mountain for the first time: 2549 metres (today 2521). Curò and Frizzoni described the climb: a rise of 1300 metres covered in less than six hours, the summit reached on all fours and celebrated with a bottle of fine wine. And then the traditional little stone man built to mark the passage of human beings.

Their enterprise led to a greater understanding of the Bergamasque Alps, and the Presolana immediately became known as the “Queen of the Orobie” The conquest of this peak was not an isolated event but an indication of a widespread persuasion that was expressed in the form of map-making and literature, as well as in a more general exploration of the Alps and in the creation of Club Alpino Italiano (CAI). The Bergamo section, which was founded on 4 May 1873 by Antonio Curò himself, is one of the first in Italy in terms of history and membership.

Meanwhile, down below in Bergamo, which has its artistic heart in the Accademia Carrara, the school of painting was training great landscape painters, who began to look to the mountains as a subject for their canvases. In 1884, Cesare Tallone’s appointment to the post of director of the school brought an air of renewal and change to the younger generations of artists. Maestro Tallone encouraged his students to paint from life, and organised outings in the open air. The Bergamasque Alps, with their peaks and waterfalls, pastures, villages and people, became one of the favourite subjects of the Bergamo school of painting.

From autumn 2022 to spring 2023, about one hundred and fifty years after the memorable first ascent of the Presolana, the Japanese photographer and mountaineer Naoki Ishikawa travelled through the Bergamasque Alps with his trusted analogue camera. His photographs show not only the various stages of his sentimental and, at the same time, anthropological journey, but they also show how these mountains can be seen in a new, different light. Finally, the contemporary artists – Matteo Rubbi and Masbedo – who open and close the exhibition, encourage us to consider the mountains – and the Bergamasque Alps in particular – as a possible horizon in the creation of a community that lives in osmosis between the mountains and plains.

Vette di luce tells us of the experience of the mountains by roping together paintings and photographs in a series of visions, which each person, each artist, conveys in their own original and personal way: approaching, walking, climbing, breathing, and observing. Drawing, painting, photographing, and documenting. Remembering.