Enrico Mascelloni MEMBER

Art historian, graduated from DAMS at the University of Bologna in 1978, since 1983 he has curated major exhibitions of contemporary and historical twentieth-century art, including at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Palazzo Forti (Verona) Modigliani a Montparnasse, cat. De Luca, 1988, Da Magritte a Magritte, cat. Mazzotta, 1989, European Expressionisms, Dadaism Dadaisms. Since the 1980s, he has been responsible for the archive of Leoncillo Leonardi, whose catalog raisonné of sculptures is in preparation and whose most important exhibitions he has curated in public and private venues.
Since the 1980s he has systematically traveled to the Middle East, Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In 1985 in Pakistan he discovered, in the Peshawar bazaar, Afghan war carpets, which he considers a most powerful visual invention and of which he constitutes one of the most important international collections exhibited, since 1993, in various exhibitions in Milan, Rome, Tehran, Marseille and the USA. In 2009 he published War Rugs- The Nightmare of Modernism, the first systematic study of the cultural phenomenon of war rugs. Always researching and in contact with contemporary artists from the above areas, he collaborates with the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Almaty (Kazakhstan), directed by Valeria Ibraeva, and the Rothas Gallery in Lahore (Pakistan), directed by Salima Hashmi. On creativity in these areas she has curated many exhibitions, including “The Return of the Magicians-The Sacred in Contemporary African Art,” Palazzo dei Sette, Orvieto, Skira cat. 1999, “The Tamerlane Syndrome – Art and Conflicts in Central Asia,” Haggerty Museum, Milwaukee (Etats-Unis), Skira cat. 2005, “The Thousand and One Days – New Pakistani Women Miniaturists,” Academy of Art, Honolulu (USA), Musée des Beaux- Arts, Rouen (France), catalog Silvana, 2005, “To the East of Nothing-Contemporary Art from Post-Soviet Asia,” Fondazione 107, Turin, cat. Edizioni 107, 2009.
Parallel to his travels, in the 1980s and 1990s, he explored an almost forgotten area of the Western avant-gardes: Fluxus, Visual Poetry and Lettrism, to which he devoted exhibitions in Italy, France and the U.S., such as “Promoting the Flood-Fluxus in its time,” Rome, Naples, cat. Parise Ed., 1996 ; “Total Poetry,” Palazzo della Ragione, Mantua, cat. Parise Ed., 1998