“Diffused light, splendor. Summer is essential and forces every soul to happiness ”
(André Gide)
The myth tells that Demeter, goddess of fields and wheat, had a daughter, the beautiful Persephone also known as Kore, who one day was snatched from her by Hades, the god of the underworld. The latter, in fact, long in love with the girl, decided to kidnap her while she was intent on picking flowers in a wonderful green meadow. Suddenly released from a chasm of the earth, Hades captures the young woman and drags her into the Afterlife to marry her.
Meanwhile, her mother Demeter, desperate, looked for her everywhere without stopping for nine days and nine nights, and for the pain she prevented the growth of the crops, unleashing a hard winter that seemed to never end.
Zeus, worried, ordered Hades the immediate release of the girl: the god of the Underworld obeyed but not before putting into action his deception. Before bringing Persephone back to her mother, he offered her a pomegranate, the fruit of the Underworld and a symbol of marriage and fertility. The consumption of the fruit, in fact, prevented the girl from remaining forever in the kingdom of the living: an eternal law of Destiny established that those who ate some pomegranate seeds in her husband’s house would soon return. Persephone returned to the sunlight and into the arms of her mother, who celebrated this event by covering the earth with flowers and fruit. Zeus therefore, to reconcile the maternal love with the husband’s needs, decided that Persephone would live two thirds of the year with her mother and the other third of her with Hades in the Underworld. Demeter then established that in the months in which Persephone was in the kingdom of the dead, cold and frost would fall in the world, giving rise to autumn and winter, while in the remaining months, which she would spend in the company of her daughter, the earth would flourish again giving rise to spring and summer.
Persephone, disputed between the surface of the living and the dark depths of the underworld, becomes a symbol of the passage, of the passing of the seasons and therefore a metaphor for the transience of human life through the tortuous paths of existence. In fact, the human being by nature is constantly “in transit”, through spaces and seasons of life, in a continuous succession of leave and new beginnings.
Galleria360 also gives its personal welcome to the summer with an exhibition entitled “Summer Art Florence”, which reflects on the eternal struggle between Thanatos and Eros, between Art and Life, between the inevitability of a finitude of human life and the immortality of art and the permanence of nature. In fact, the artists of “Summer Art Florence”, through the chromatic lighting, the intense brightness and the colorful beauty of their artistic creations, announce the advent of an eternal summer.
The exhibition will open on Thursday 23rd of June 2022, at 7.30 pm, in via Borgo Ognissanti 77r, Florence. During the vernissage Jazz musicians will play live. In compliance with the pandemic regulations, access to the gallery is allowed only to visitors with masks.
