Franca Ghitti. A story of Other Alphabets

The first major site-specific solo exhibition dedicated to Franca Ghitti It takes the form of an extraordinary exhibition project that weaves the sculptor’s rich body of work into the museum’s permanent exhibition. The artist’s creative exploration, rooted in the Camonica Valley, aims to give voice to the memories and formal codes of a marginal, non-metropolitan civilisation, before linking up with a series of intercontinental correspondences inspired in part by his stays in places such as Paris, Salzburg and the Kenya.

The exhibition showcases sculptures, installations and works on paper from the’Franca Ghitti Archive, from Franca Ghitti Museum in Darfo Boario Terme and from private collections, which skilfully combine sculpture, painting e architecture. The core of the visual investigation centres on the “Other Alphabets”: a formal inventory comprising notches, knots, cup marks and the conceptual use of “scraps” – that is, the historical remnants of ironworking left over from the work of blacksmiths and smiths.

These material fragments are brought back to life and given creative depth, rising up into structures that evoke the collective memory of a community and the archetype of human labour. The phenomenology of the works engages in a constant dialogue with the confined space of the monastic complex of Brescia, transforming the itinerary into a profound reflection on the non-verbal languages of the twentieth century.