Pietro Pietra - The Power of the Line

The Bologna for the Arts Association presents, at Palazzo d’Accursio from 6 December to 12 February, Pietro Pietra (1885–1956). The Power of the Line, an anthology exhibition marking the 140th anniversary of the artist’s birth. The show gathers 82 original works—including prints, drawings, watercolours, and paintings—coming from the Pietra family’s historical archive as well as from several private collections. The works on display are mainly drawings from life, oil paintings, and etchings dedicated to the animal world, along with a series of water-coloured pen drawings portraying views of the artist’s hometown, Bologna.

This monographic exhibition aims to retrace the Bolognese tradition of drawing and printmaking between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, following the footsteps of Pietro Pietra’s intense and multifaceted production. Pietra was a dreamer who deeply loved Bologna, depicting it in evocative views and immortalising the city’s symbolic places—its historic porticoed streets, the ancient gates of the city walls, and its most characteristic squares. Here, a taste for architectural views and rigorous perspective merges with scenic theatricality and narrative dimension, while figures—reduced to blotches or essential strokes—often serve to measure and enliven the urban monumentality. Pietra portrays a Bologna that has since disappeared, transformed by the restorations and demolitions of the late nineteenth century, recovering its memory through his watercolour views, suspended between historical reality and dreamlike vision.