Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Banksy, Obey, Mario Schifano, Mimmo Rotella, Arman will be the protagonists of "UNMONDOPOP: myths, icons and symbols in contemporary art", an exhibition organized by the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Desenzano del Garda (Bs ) in collaboration with the MV Eventi agency of Vicenza and curated by Matteo Vanzan. From 17 December 2022 to 19 February 2023 at the Castle the works of these artists will be placed side by side with those of the more contemporary ones to understand what is the source of inspiration for an artist who looks at the world, society and the history of art. The leitmotif of the exhibition will be the words of John Cage: "everything we look at is worthy of our attention": not a Pop Art exhibition, as the title might suggest, but on the concept of a popular world made up of symbols, icons, myths and works of art that have now entered our collective imagination. “A Pop World lands in Desenzano del Garda and I'm personally enthusiastic about it”, says the Councilor for Cultural Policies Pietro Avanzi. “I strongly wanted to bring this review to the city because I believe both in the quality of the exhibition of the works and in the organization entrusted to the curator Matteo Vanzan, a guarantee of professionalism and fruitful collaboration. I confess fascinated by the persuasion of these works imbued with irony, denunciation, politics, intelligence, protest and much more. The concept of "popular" understood as the collective imagination of symbols, icons, myths, works of art and everything that has now entered our world, convinces me that this exhibition will be successful simply because it speaks of us, of our being and how “everything we look at is worthy of our attention”. “The exhibition is conceived as a rich journey made up of references and allusions to understand how artistic inspiration can often come from a previous cultural baggage, ” says the curator Matteo Vanzan. “The collective imagination becomes a pretext for the re-appropriation of images known not only by those involved in the cultural panorama, but above all by the wider public: who does not know Leonardo's Last Supper or Michelangelo's Last Judgment? These works have been taken up and made contemporary by twentieth-century artists, Andy Warhol and Tano Festa in the first place, transforming themselves into new icons and iconographies that belong to our society. The title of the exhibition must be intense precisely in this sense: the moment in which the cultural sphere passes to a shared knowledge also thanks to the promotion made by newspapers, the internet but also by the great museums and the most renowned international cultural institutions. A sort of citationism will accompany the visitor through Unmondopop where the works of the protagonists on display will dialogue with those that inspired them which will be reproduced for the occasion: the Campo del Pane by Mario Schifano as a reference to the Campo di Grano with flight of crows by Vincent Van Gogh, Hans Christian Andersen and Andy Warhol, Michelangelo's Last Judgment and that of Tano Festa; and again the famous Venus of Arman taken from Greek statuary, Giosetta Fioroni who takes up Tiziano, Franca Pisani and Sandro Botticelli up to Banksy who quotes Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein who creates a reference with the evolution of Piet Mondrian's Red Tree. “On display” continues Matteo Vanzan “a fundamental part will be the exposure of our most contemporary artists such as Guido Airoldi, Angelo Alessandrini, Manuela Bedeschi, Beppe Borella, Massimo Gurnari, Gabriele Landini, Manuela Luzi, Mahatma Marchi, Andrea Meneghetti, Daniele Nalin, Franca Pisani, Elena Prosdocimo, Maurizio Taioli, Dario Tironi, Luca Trucca, Ermes Terso Vanzan, Giuseppe Veneziano and Mr. Wany, former protagonists of the Venice Biennale and exhibitions in important cultural venues such as the Palazzo delle Esposizioni and the Macro in Rome, Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, the Uffizi in Florence, Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, the Gallery of Modern Art in Turin. This long journey will also give the visitor the opportunity to understand how the language of art has evolved up to the present day. "