FASCINAZIONI. Sculpture, graphics and painting by archaeologist Renato Perini

From June 28 to September 16, the Tridentine Diocesan Museum hosted the first monographic exhibition dedicated to Renato Perini (1924-2007), on the centenary of his birth.

Known for his fundamental contribution to the renewal of Alpine prehistoric archaeology, the “Maestro,” as he was called as a testament to his marked ability to foster the development and dissemination of knowledge, left hundreds of paintings, drawings and wood sculptures, mainly made in a dimension of private and family life. This part of his cultural heritage, despite having received positive albeit fleeting critical feedback, has so far remained in the shadows.

Organized by the cultural associations Sintesi - Museo Didattico and Bianconero, in collaboration with the Tridentine Diocesan Museum. This exhibition intends to enhance a creative journey that goes back to the years of the Second World War and ends, without interruption, only at the dawn of the third millennium.

A selection of over seventy works, accompanied by sketches and notebooks, in which he tirelessly noted the flow of thoughts and impressions, documented the various phases of a research born from an intimate expressive urgency, between a living sense of the spectacle of nature, amazement of sacred, and living dialogue with contemporaneity.

The different exhibition sections presented, by groups, the variety of supports and materials experimented over time by Renato Perini, from the first pictorial tests to the "discovery" of wooden sculpture, his material of choice, up to the inks and coloured chalks that form the last part of its production; without forgetting the sketches and studies that accompanied his work as an archaeologist at every step. His international fame is linked in particular to the excavation campaigns conducted between 1969 and 1976 on the pile-dwelling site of the Fiavé peat bog. A century after his birth, Renato Perini's profile is now enriched with new, precious elements that confirm him as a sensitive interpreter of the environmental and cultural heritage of his land.

The exhibition is being held as part of Trento European Volunteer Capital 2024. In this important context, the museum renewed its commitment to openness to associations and the community, inviting all citizens to participate and actively contribute to cultural and social activities related to the exhibition.