TURIN.- Intesa Sanpaolo is now showing It never gets old. The Sanremo Music Festival, in black and white (1951-1976), an exhibition curated by Aldo Grasso and which is now on view at Gallerie d’Italia, Turin since 1 February until 12 May 2024. Realised under the patronage of the Piedmont Region and the City of Turin, the exhibition presents 85 photographs from the Intesa Sanpaolo Publifoto Archive which document the history of Sanremo Music Festival, the most iconic and famous Italian festival, providing a powerful lens into the country’s popular culture and the history of its National television channel, RAI.
Showcasing only a few images of the artists' performances on stage, the exhibition highlights photographs of the "off-stage" moments of the famous Italian Music Festival: the singers’ rehearsals, the artists' catwalks around the small Ligurian town of Sanremo, the prestigious attendees’ autographs, as well as the audience, the make-up room, the orchestra and press room. Realised in partnership with RAI and in collaboration with RAI Teche, the exhibition also features rare video- sound contributions.
Michele Coppola, Intesa Sanpaolo's Executive Director of Art Culture and Historical Heritage, states: This exhibition is a tribute to the Sanremo Festival that still unites all generations around Italian music and culture. The exhibition also bears witness to the Bank's participation in the country's moments of identity through the enhancement and sharing of images from the Publifoto Archive.
The Sanremo Music Festival was launched in 1951, organised by the Sanremo Casino and RAI office in Turin. It lasted for three evenings and was live-broadcast by Radio RAI from the Casino's Salone delle Feste. The first editions were broadcast only by radio, but in 1955, the event began to gain popularity and RAI TV decided to broadcast it live. From that moment, the history of the festival became strictly tied to that of the Italian National television.
The Publifoto Agency photo reporters were among the first to realise the importance of the event and, between 1951-1976 – when the event was hosted in the Sanremo Casino – they took around 15,000 photographs of the festival. Shining light on the great documentary value of this collection, the photographs on view bear witness to an Italy keenly aware of the need to forget the recent war, and which entrusts popular songs to deliver the sense of a rediscovered carefreeness, and the idea that the years of misery are over. The title refers to the forever-young Music festival, which this year celebrates its 74th edition, and to a country – Italy – in full economic boom.
The exhibition is part of the initiatives aiming to enhance the Publifoto Archive, consisting of more than 7 million photographs of the Milan-based photojournalistic agency founded by Vincenzo Carrese in 1937. With the firm intent to avoid its dispersion, Intesa Sanpaolo purchased the Publifoto Archive in 2015. The archive is now managed by the Intesa Sanpaolo Historical Archive at the Gallerie d'Italia in Turin.
On the occasion of the opening of It never gets old. The Sanremo Music Festival, in black and white, the website of the Intesa Sanpaolo Historical Archive will publish the cataloguing files of all the photographs by the Publifoto Agency. The exhibition will be accompanied by a rich programme of in-depth, free events traditionally taking place every Wednesday evening at Gallerie d’Italia, Turin and part of the public programme #INSIDE.
Intesa Sanpaolo is Italy’s leading banking group serving families, businesses and the real economy with a significant international presence. Intesa Sanpaolo’s distinctive business model makes it a European leader in Wealth Management, Protection & Advisory, highly focused on digital and fintech, in particular with Isybank, the Group’s digital bank. An efficient and resilient Bank, it benefits from its wholly owned product factories in asset management and insurance. The Group’s strong ESG commitment includes providing €115 billion in impact lending by 2025 to communities and for the green transition, and €500 million in contributions to support people most in need, positioning Intesa Sanpaolo as a world leader in terms of social impact. Intesa Sanpaolo is committed to Net Zero by 2030 for its own emissions and by 2050 for its loan and investment portfolios. An engaged patron of Italian culture, Intesa Sanpaolo has created its own network of museums, the Gallerie d’Italia, to present the bank’s artistic heritage and to offer a venue for prestigious cultural projects.
