From March 2nd to May 28th 2000 America Illustrated: when art creates a stir… Rome: Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Town Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art)

From March to May 2000, we recommend to all the young art lovers to visit «America Illustrated».
Just a floor with the lift and you’ll feel like you are in the Big Apple, thank to the background of jazz music and to the satirical cartoons of the New Yorker. The 80 covers exhibited in occasion of the 75th birthday of the magazine show a mix of sophisticated journalism and ironical images: vices and virtues of the New Yorkers politicians are illustrated with biting fantasy by Saul Steinberg, Edward Sorel, Ian Falconer, and lots of other famous American (and European) illustrators.
The cartoons are realized with different techniques: oils, collage, lithography, digital printing…
In the upper floor there are the other sections of the exhibition: 37 american illustrators deal with the subject «Rome 2000». That’s the triumph of the pop – art, of the action painting, the portrait of the frenetic, colourful, universe of the USA according to the modern sensitiveness of its contemporary artists: from Brad Holland to the emerging Jordin Isip (in the second section), from Gary Baseman to Benton Mahan (in the section dedicated to the illustration – representation – of Rome).
The influences of Linchestein and Warhol are always present, but there are several original artists, who have in common the variety of the techniques and of the themes: from the social critic to the tribute given to the mythic personalities of the American history.
The «lead character» of the exhibition is the contemporary world with its multiform humanity. The new American art is perfectly able to reproduce this world with a force and an expressiveness that have no equal.
A mention goes to the really good organisation of the exhibition: the positions equipped with multimedia tools that offer the opportunity to learn more about the artists, the international conferences – for the first days of the exhibition –, the workshops on American art for the months of March and April and the laboratories for the children.