The Jean Cocteau Museum in Menton has prepared a wonderful surprise for us with this exhibition of works by Valerio Adami, a draftsman and painter born in Bologna in 1935. The works presented at the Cocteau Museum are a mix of several styles: cubism, pop art, and figurative. The black lines highlighting the separation of colors will evoke thoughts of comic strips. There’s a hint of comics in these paintings; Corto Maltese is not far away. Some may see the representation of stained glass. Mythology, and here we are close to Cocteau, is very present in Valerio Adami’s work. The exhibition is a play or an opera in four acts:
1) Myths and metaphors, ancient Greece, Rome, religion or rather the religious with the parables of the Bible, leading us to music with Wagner’s Lohengrin.
2) Intimacies, his own, that of humanity, that of a disjointed man where movement is suggested with a skillful play of legs.
3) Journeys, Valerio Adami would be quicker to say where he hasn’t been. Like all artists, he sees places with a perspective different from that of the traveler or tourist. There is a metaphysical dimension here, the Gods, God, his God, are present and felt.
4) Portraits and Self-portraits. A gallery of celebrities, where literature and history can be found, and these portraits challenge us on these ‘heroes’ and then the artist himself, where we come to the most recent works. Valerio Adami could be summed up in one phrase: “From drawing to painting!” Moreover, the artist presents several drawings that were the genesis of his paintings.
The Cocteau Museum also presents an exhibition on Cocteau the Mediterranean, composed of five tableaux. A film about Santo Sospir illustrates this exhibition. The five sequences connect the artist to the Mediterranean from Greece to Spain.
Thierry Jan
