STEFANO BESSONI. La Mole delle Meraviglie

The Museo Nazionale del Cinema presents Stefano Bessoni. La Mole delle Meraviglie (Stefano Bessoni. The Mole of the Wonders) — curated by Stefano Bessoni and Domenico De Gaetano — the first major exhibition dedicated to the creative genius of the director, illustrator and animator. The exhibition is hosted on the reception floor of the Mole Antonelliana, with free admission during museum opening hours.

The more than 150 works on display — mostly from Bessoni’s private archive and the collections of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema — recount the areas explored by his expressive research: from fairy tales to the world of science, from illustration to stop-motion animation and puppet-making, through to his great love of cinema.

Between fantasy and fairy tale, in an exhibition route populated by puppets, illustrations, films, artefacts and scientific specimens, visitors are immersed in the world of Stefano Bessoni: a fascinating Wunderkammer housed within the most majestic and imposing of Turin’s “cabinets of curiosities”, the Mole Antonelliana.

The exhibition route takes shape around five illustrious figures — Antonelli, Prolo, Darwin, Lombroso and Greenaway — who, although belonging to different periods and fields, are united by the same vocation: collecting and cataloguing objects and ideas. Bessoni interprets them and translates them into graphic lines and objects, alternating colour with black and white, reality with imagination. Stefano Bessoni’s art and work recount this common thread.

At the centre of the exhibition is the original desk used by Maria Adriana Prolo at Palazzo Chiablese, the first home of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema, together with the original copy of Storia del cinema muto italiano, written by Prolo and published in 1951.

To accompany the exhibition, two volumes have been published. The first is a catalogue published by Silvana Editoriale, featuring the works on display, introductions by Enzo Ghigo and Martino Gozzi, and texts by Domenico De Gaetano, Alfredo Accatino, Santo Alligo, Ivan Cenzi and Telmo Pievani, along with an interview with Stefano Bessoni conducted by Claudia Gianetto and Marco Grifo.

At the same time, Logos Edizioni has published Stefano Bessoni’s volume Maria Adriana Prolo. La signorina del cinematografo, published in two languages, which tells the story of the woman who brought the Museo del Cinema into being.

In addition to the exhibition, a series of initiatives are planned featuring Stefano Bessoni and his art.

On Friday 12 May 2023 at 10.00 a.m., in the Blue Room of the Rectorate Palace, Stefano Bessoni will be in conversation with Domenico De Gaetano during the masterclass Stop-motion. The Dark Soul of Animation, organised by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in collaboration with the University of Turin and Scuola Holden. This will be followed by a guided tour of the exhibition. Participation is free, subject to availability.

Also on Friday 12 May, at 8.30 p.m. at Cinema Massimo, the feature film Krokodyle will be screened, introduced by director Stefano Bessoni and Domenico De Gaetano, Director of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema.

A series of workshops organised by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin and Scuola Holden, in collaboration with the University of Turin, will also take place in June and July.

The Wunderkammer

The Wunderkammer is the archetype of today’s natural history museums and can be associated with the cabinets of curiosities of the Renaissance. It originated from the desire to bring together, in a single place, collections of natural objects, curiosities and astonishing artefacts. Its period of greatest splendour came to an end around the mid-18th century with the advent of modern scientific thought, although the impulse to create “cabinets of curiosities” has survived above all in the artistic field, as seen in the works of Joseph Cornell, André Breton and Kurt Schwitters.

The artist

Stefano Bessoni is a director, illustrator and animator. He has made experimental films that have won awards at national and international festivals. After the feature films Frammenti di scienze inesatte, Imago Mortis and Krokodyle, he began telling his stories through illustrated books and became fascinated by animated cinema. Bessoni firmly believes in cinema as a form of expression and in auteur cinema. His main points of reference are Peter Greenaway and Jan Švankmajer. He does not rule out returning to filmmaking one day. To distract himself from the trials and tribulations of cinema, he has devoted himself to publishing and teaching, and has rediscovered his passion for entomology by breeding giant tropical beetles.