There is the broad scope to which the long roads and boundless American expanses force the gaze.
But, alongside fiery skies and enormous solitudes, there is also the varied humanity that populates the diners open day and night, with vintage furnishings and bright colours.
And again, the glimpses of motels, vintage cars, abandoned amusement parks and neon signs, which overlap the unforgettable atmospheres of New Orleans and the very tall skyscrapers of the big cities.
The world seen through the eyes of Bob Dylan is contained in the over 100 works that make up "Retrospectrum", the first retrospective in Europe dedicated to the great star's visual art, scheduled at the Maxxi from 16 December to 30 April.
After visiting Shanghai and Miami, the exhibition, curated by Shai Baitel,
Divided into eight sections, the itinerary reveals how much visual art, in addition to the music, songs and poetic texts that made him a legend, has represented (and still represents) for 50 years now an important piece of multifaceted creativity by Dylan.
Even the dynamic spaces of Gallery 5, with its large windows and sloping floor, where the exhibition is set up, seem perfect for welcoming the artist's vivid imagination, which returns in the form of drawing, colour, molded material.
For the visitor, the exhibition project can truly represent a journey of emotion and knowledge, to observe, through the sensitivity and inquisitive eye of an artist who has been able to speak to all generations, what Dylan himself has met on the road, the landscapes, people, things,
the atmospheres.
In this suggestive visual diary, in which even large works are striking for the intensity of the colors and for the maturity of the artistic gesture (in addition to the American landscapes, there is also a piece of Italy in the Spanish Steps immortalized in the work of 2020 "When I paint my masterpiece"), however, words could not be missing: in fact, some of Dylan's best-known texts appear in the Mondo Scripto section, personally transcribed by the artist and accompanied by his graphite drawings.
Of the works on display, one will remain at the Maxxi, the "Subterranean Homesick Blues Series", which will become part of the museum's national public collection: the work, born around the 1965 song Subterranean Homesick Blues, is composed of a historic video (in which Dylan drops a series of sheets with the lyrics of the song to the rhythm of the music) and by 64 recently made signs showing the lyrics of the sheets, set up to form a wall next to the screen.
"Dylan is a living legend and a Renaissance man because his creativity is versatile," said curator Shai Baitel this morning.
"We started thinking about the exhibition in 2017, to give the public an opportunity to learn about Dylan's visual art. We imagined it as a train ride, from Minnesota,
from which he started, up to New York where he then took his first steps.
In the sections of the exhibition there are landscapes, but above all every phase of the artist's career: among the works, the first works up to the last made during the covid". "For us this exhibition is a dream", said Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, director del Maxxi, recalling the work carried out together with the former president Giovanna Melandri (absent today the new president Alessandro Giuli due to illness), "the itinerary reveals the versatility of a genius, capable of recounting his art with rigor and clarity through various languages" .
