“Quello che hai visto hai visto” / “What you have seen, you have seen” Goffredo Parise and the Artists: Talk | Professor Elisa Attanasio

In conjunction with the exhibition “Giosetta Fioroni. The future came out of the past. Images and words”, ACP – Palazzo Franchetti by Fondazione Calarota is pleased to host “Quello che hai visto hai visto” / “What you have seen, you have seen”. Goffredo Parise and the Artists, an in-depth talk dedicated to the relationship between the Vicenza-born writer and some of the artists he loved and frequented, with particular attention to the dialogue with his partner Giosetta Fioroni, the protagonist of the exhibition in the Biblioteca Morandiana. Through the contribution of Professor Elisa Attanasio, a scholar of Parise’s work and researcher in Contemporary Italian Literature, the meeting will offer an opportunity to explore the way in which the writer approaches art and, more broadly, reality, considering sensory experience a privileged form of knowledge of the world.

Starting from the writings collected in the volume Artisti, through which Goffredo Parise (1929–1986) expresses his relationship with painting and with some of the artists who accompanied him on his human and intellectual path, the talk hosted at ACP – Palazzo Franchetti will further explore the way Parise approaches works of art, privileging direct experience of vision and the senses over critical categories and ideological readings.
From this perspective, reflections will take shape on some of the artists he most admired: from the imagined dialogue with Renato Guttuso’s La Vucciria to the reflections dedicated to Giosetta Fioroni and Filippo De Pisis, the talk will highlight the affinities Parise recognizes between painting and writing: the speed of the brushstroke, lightness, the sensibility of the senses, and attention to things captured at the very moment they appear and pass. In the background, certain philosophical suggestions will help outline a reading of Parise’s gaze as a form of knowledge of reality.
Giosetta Fioroni’s presence within this path takes on a particular significance in the context of the exhibition hosted in the spaces of the Biblioteca Morandiana. The relationship between art and publishing is explored in the exhibition through a selection of artist’s books and illustrations created by Fioroni in collaboration with important twentieth-century writers, including Goffredo Parise, her life partner. Their emotional and creative bond, which blossomed in the vibrant cultural environment revolving around Piazza del Popolo, lasted over twenty years, constantly nourished by a shared exchange of images, words, ideas, and projects.
Guiding the audience through this journey will be Professor Elisa Attanasio, Researcher in Contemporary Italian Literature, whose work focuses on the relationships between literature, philosophy, and anthropology. She has devoted numerous studies to the works of Italian and European twentieth-century authors, including Goffredo Parise and Anna Maria Ortese. She is the author of the monographs Goffredo Parise. I Sillabari della percezione (Mimesis, 2019) and Divenire drago: esplorazioni nell'opera di Ortese (Pendragon, 2022). In 2025 she published the volume Forme dello spaesamento nella letteratura italiana (1965–1978) for Quodlibet. She has taught for several years at the Sorbonne and has been a visiting scholar at the University of Zurich.