Luigi Pericle

The rediscovery of a master

A small villa from the 1930s, closed for years and swallowed up by brambles. It guarded an unimaginable secret. The story of a forgotten master. His art. His culture. For fifteen years, Greta and Andrea Biasca-Caroni have watched that house, more and more badly damaged with the passing of time, dreaming of being able to acquire it. 

Its garden bordered the property of their hotel in Ascona (Canton of Ticino, Switzerland), the Hotel Ascona, on Monte Verità (Hill of Truth). They wanted to visit those rooms, fascinated by the magnetism they emanated and by the memories of a silent man who had lived there intensely. Acquired by auction and reopened after a long period of forgetfulness, the house has revealed an extraordinary heritage. Hundreds of paintings and drawings meticulously kept in large wooden boxes crammed inside the rooms and basement. The high bookshelves still kept, rigorously aligned, volumes of philosophy, literature, art of past civilizations, from Egypt to the Far East, as well as scientific texts of theosophy, anthroposophy, astrology, ufology, which had nourished the knowledge and wisdom of the master, his vast preparation, which he then poured into the paintings and papers as an exercise of meditation, and into thousands of autograph documents, notebooks, drawings, theoretical and narrative texts. Bringing back to life paintings, Indian ink drawings, horoscopes, and manuscripts made it possible to return the figure of a leading author to history of art, and of culture in general; a protagonist of aesthetic research from the second post-war period onwards, whose human and intellectual life suddenly reemerged with all its value and complexity.

You find all the whole story of Luigi Pericle here, but now let’s have a look of what is going on about Luigi Pericle at the

The Warburg Institute

The Warburg Institute is one of the world’s leading centres for studying the interaction of ideas, images and society. It is dedicated to the survival and transmission of culture across time and space, with a special emphasis on the afterlife of antiquity. Its open-stack Library, Photographic Collection and Archive serve as an engine for interdisciplinary research, postgraduate teaching and a prestigious events and publication programme.

Curatorial Conversations invites museum directors and makers of recent exhibitions at world-leading museums and galleries to the Warburg to discuss their work.

The contribution of esoteric thought to modern art has long been overlooked. But in recent years, with major international exhibitions dedicated to artists such as Hilma af Klint and the members of the Transcendental Painting Group, an alternative version of modernity – one deeply informed by mysticism – has come to the fore. With exhibitions dedicated to M.K. Čiurlionis and Luigi Pericle currently on show in London, at Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Estorick Collection respectively, this event will explore the commitment of two artists to esoteric philosophies – and the role such thinking played in their art. How are such contexts best communicated in the gallery? How should we approach and interpret these artists’ paintings? And where do such figures fit in the evolving story of modern art? Speakers: Andrea Biasca-Caroni (President, Archivio Luigi Pericle, Ascona), Kathleen Soriano (independent curator, art historian and broadcaster, and curator of ‘M.K. Čiurlionis: Between Worlds’) Chaired by Thomas Marks (Associate Fellow, Warburg Institute) Curatorial Conversations invites museum directors and makers of recent exhibitions at world-leading museums and galleries to the Warburg to discuss their work. The conversations, led by academics at the Warburg Institute, discuss the issues of setting the directorial or curatorial agenda and staging meaningful encounters with objects. The series is designed to draw out discussion of the discoveries made, challenges tackled and the lessons learned in heading a collection and putting together internationally renowned exhibitions. This event took place on 2 December 2023.

The Warburg Institute is one of the world’s leading centres for studying the interaction of ideas, images, and society. It was founded in Hamburg by the pioneering historian Aby Warburg (1866–1929), the scholarly scion of one of Europe’s great banking families, and it was exiled to England in 1933, becoming the only institution saved from Nazi Germany to survive intact in Britain today. The Institute became part of the University of London in 1944 and has been housed since 1958 in a building designed by Charles Holden, opening onto three of Bloomsbury’s historic squares.

Warburg set out to find the roots of the Renaissance in ancient culture and ended up changing the way we see the world around us. He created a research institute that has served—during a turbulent century—as a safe haven and creative crucible for some of the world’s greatest scholars, curators, and artists.

Today, the Institute provides postgraduate courses, hosts research projects and offers a range of public programmes. It houses an open-stack library of more than 380,000 rare and modern volumes still organised using Warburg’s original structure, as well as a Photographic Collection with more than 400,000 images and one of the most complete archives of any research centre in the humanities.