The color of life. Hommage à Piero Siena, is a meaningful homage to a man who gave an important contribution to the contemporary culture of out national territory. It is an exhibition acting as an interpreter of the XXth century figurative art up to reach our days. Pier Luigi Siena (1912-2003) painter, critic and art historian, director of Museion from 1987 to 2001 started a contemporary review in a complex area, as South Tyrol is, borderland between the northern and southern culture.

The color of life, organized by the Autonomous Province of Bolzano – South Tyrol , Italian Culture, City of Bolzano Culture Assessorship , and Museion, is a show that remembers the passion and the commitment of a life who crossed the XXth century, and made of art, artists, and politics, the engine of an experimentation, and of a daily engagement. Three important sites in the town of Bolzano host the show curated by Paola Tognon, from December 3, 2004 , to January 30, 2005 : Maretsch Castle, Museion, Trevi Center, besides within the same city. The exhibit is structured thanks to the work of the main committee of curators: Gabriella Belli, Andreas Hapkemeyer, Letizia Ragaglia and Fulvio Giorgi who collaborated with Piero Siena and shared his choices in various moments of his life.

The show is divided into five sections. The complete itinerary allows the visitor to trace a figurative course that from historical vanguards brings to the most contemporary research through representative and indicative choices of a critical and curatorial study stemming from Piero Siena’s experiences to idealistically continue along a line of experimentation.

The first section at the Maretsch Castle, Piero Siena, years of art and of life (curated by Gabriella Belli and Paola Tognon) shows some among the main cultural references of a generation, the one of the first thirty years of the XXth century in Italy and in Europe, by underlining in the accomplished figurative choices Piero Siena’s life course – from futurism with particular attention to the theme of speed, to the Russian and German avant-gardes, up to Italian Realism.

The second section, Memory, still at the Maretsch Castle (curated by Andreas Hapkemeyer and Paola Tognon) englobes the artworks of three internationally known Italian artists – Maurizio Nannucci, Giulio Paolini, Mauro Staccioli – also tied to Piero Siena’s activity during his years at Museion. They were asked to create an artwork centered on the concept of memory, meant as a key to the present, and a link between past and future. The two sections are connected through the video installation by Mark Wallinger, Threshold to the Kingdom; the lounge of an airport is the passage way, the territory of those who are arriving and leaving, the contemporary junction of a trip towards infinite aims.

The third section at Museion, Piero Siena, the territory and the years of Museion (curated by Letizia Ragaglia) shows through thematic synthesis Piero Siena’s activity as the director of Museion, his figurative culture, the artists who were his favorite art companions and his indefatigable research and promotion in the visual culture of the territory. The fourth section, the one at the Trevi Center, Piero Siena, the collection of a life (curated by Fulvio Giorgi), shows some aspects of Piero Siena’s life through an intimate vision that could relate its stages as an artist, author of texts dedicated to art and as the friend of some of the most important artists, of his same age. The activities organized by Piero Siena have moreover developed an incentive on the artistic reality of the territory: artists in fact, also by entering in contact with movements and parallel situations, have given way to a vital artistic practice well witnessed in these two latter parts of the exhibition.

The fifth section at Maretsch Castle , Intuition (curated by Paola Tognon) ideally closes the entire project with a challenge to the future: Francesco Jodice and Berta Fischer, two young international artists who give an interpretation in a contemporary key of the restless, curious, and experimental spirit of Piero Siena, through artworks especially created and freely dedicated.

Finally the volume that gathers this project wants to be an instrument capable of recreating the spirit of the exhibition, of enlarging it by stating its aims. For this reason we have chosen to reproduce a selection of his writings, a scientific bibliography of his publications, and an historical-artistic synthesis which could help the reader to trace the coordinates of the most intense years of Siena ’s life. In the volume moreover, some precious voices of friends have been collected, as well as praise by artists and colleagues who shared with him great parts of their lives in art.