Giancarlo Vitali Museum

Giancarlo Vitali Museum

The GIANCARLO VITALI MUSEUM is the second new BAC (Bellano Arte Cultura) site, an itinerary that winds through the historic centre of the village, enriched by cultural events.

The Giancarlo Vitali Museum project stems from the idea of redeveloping and restoring spaces of great historical significance and urban importance to the town, with the aim of paying tribute to an artist who made his birthplace the central theme of his figurative poetics, exporting it to a high degree of national and international interest. The opportunity arose when the Vitali family donated a large number of works to the Municipality of Bellano and the ArchiViVitali ETS Association with the aim of establishing a permanent home for their study and conservation, carrying out conservation work and renovating ‘what remains’ of Palazzo Lorla, commonly known as “Il Circolo dei Lavoratori” (The Workers’ Club), and the spaces connected to it, a place that is considered the soul of the town and which preserves the signs of a thousand years of history, as well as being, together with the Town Hall and the Bishop’s house, one of the oldest buildings in the village. The new project restores visibility to architectural elements that surprisingly reappear as signs of a path that connects different residential areas and old commercial spaces, bringing to the surface styles and historical evidence that surprisingly redraw a path of rediscovery and new storytelling.

The Exhibition Route

The exhibition is organised into a varied route, in constant dialogue with the existing architectural elements, which have been given new visibility and function. This approach aims to preserve and amplify the bond of empathy and authenticity that historically connects the Palazzo Lorla building to the community of Bellano.
Giancarlo Vitali’s works are arranged according to an analogical rather than chronological criterion, in close dialogue with the geometry of the new space.

Room 1

The first room, divided by a reflective wall, introduces visitors to a double asymmetrical space. It is Vitali’s intimate world: Germana (his lifelong partner), his family and friends. Faces and presences that reflect each other, witnesses and interpreters of a profound experience and a specific territorial belonging.

Room 2

The second room is characterised by a circularity of contrasts and unexpected points of view.
This section is also divided into two geometric spaces that celebrate Bellano as a living theatre, a constant source of inspiration for the artist, in close dialogue with a harsh everyday life: traditional still lifes arranged “at the table”, the same ones that for centuries have lent themselves to the vanity of colour and the representation of the transience of time.

The Garden

The third room is outdoors. The exit to the garden invites visitors to pause in front of a large mural entitled “Uccelli al Museo” (Birds at the Museum), a title borrowed from a small series of imaginative and ironic works that Giancarlo Vitali dedicated to birds. This fresco, painted by Velasco Vitali as a tribute to his painter father, invites visitors to gaze out over the landscape, from the clear sobriety of the Lorla house to the park that climbs up to the Orrido. It should also be remembered that the last owner of this house, now partly converted into a museum, was Agostino Lorla (1815-1888), a solitary man devoted to the garden of the Palazzo di Bellano. A lover of dogs and birds, he had a talking parrot and wanted the windows on the top floor to be always open so that swallows could freely enter to nest.

Rooms 4-5

The fourth space is a narrow corridor displaying tables laden with food or what remains “after the feast” and leads into the large blue room.

The fifth and final room of the exhibition is defined by a straight line centred on the painting “La Festa è finita” (The Party is Over), which cuts across and contrasts two worlds: animals and nature, protagonists and victims of our voracity.