Luigi Nono, a biography

The Luigi Nono Archives and the Giorgio Cini Foundation have organised a photographic exhibition entitled Luigi Nono, a biography, curated by Giorgio Mastinu, to be held in the Palazzo Cini at San Vio.
After the recent cataloguing and digitalisation of the photographs owned by Rina Nono (the composer’s sister), the photographic collection in the Luigi Nono archives – the subject of a project to reorder, catalogue and digitalise all 6,000 photos – has been enhanced with documents illustrating and completing Nono’s biography as regards his childhood, adolescence and the period of his studies in Venice and Padua.
The overall 100 images selected feature and help reconstruct family haunts: the large maternal house at Limena, trips in the lagoon as far as Torcello, sunny days in Bassano, and the Cugnac mountains. The study and cataloguing of the negatives (there are no positive copies) will complete the survey of photographic documents and lead to the publication of a catalogue, also on a website (www.luiginono.it), thus providing a tool for study and research of great scientific, historical and artistic interest.
An initial survey has identified many unpublished images, especially from the 1950s and ‘60s (including a lecture by T. W. Adorno at Darmstadt and an important sequence of rehearsals from the azione scenica (‘stage action’) Intolleranza 1960, performed at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice in April 1961. Many of the previously unpublished images will contribute to reconstructing Nono’s artistic career and personal story, and therefore also the dates of some of his meetings, movements, and contacts. But above all they will highlight a world of shared presences.