Rogatchi’s Blues Project: Reflections on Italy, from 2010 onward
ROGATCHI’s BLUES Project was conceived in 2010, upon the invitation by the Italian initial hosts and organisers from Milan and Florence. Michael was invited to create and to show in the several Italian cities his personal artistic reflections on Italy which the artist loves and knows well, and where he lives and works often and regularly, for a part of a year.
The idea for the initial stage of the project in Florence was also to challenge artistically recently restored premises of Cioffi-Jacometti Palazzo which is very well-known historical building initially being a residence for the Pope’s treasurer in the XVIII century. The idea to challenge artistically historical premises designed in late Baroque, Rococo style with contemporary figurative art collection was fresh, interesting, and demanding. Inna Rogatchi curated that special exhibition and the project around it.
The title of the project, Rogatchi’s Blues is a play of words, reflecting on the musical theme of many artworks created by Michael Rogatchi for this project, and also reflecting on the fact that all these works were created in shades of ultra-marine colours.
Michael Rogatchi’s reflections on Italy created for this quite special series are different in character from the conventional reactions of many artists to that unparalleled country known as a source of beauty. Michael does not create another landscape however beautiful it might be, not thinking in a category of ‘ tourist postcards’, not copying one of another Italian famous place or image. What he does in the matter of artistic reflections to the country which is highly important for him it is to process its culture, literature, music, its nature and its people in his inner world, and creates the works which his Italy has fed the artist with. They might be on totally independent themes, some of them does bear references to Italy in various way, and all of them are intensely lyrical. There is no surprise that the Rogatchi Blues are covering three major themes: love, music, and Italy’s presence.
The project which has become extremely successful included the core exhibition, Artist’s Lecture, Q & A, Artist’s Talk.The exhibition had been so successful and has caused such huge interest that it has been prolonged by the Italian organisers from initial five months to ten months, unprecedented move for Italy full of art programs and events. The project did run in Florence from May 2011 until April 2012. The Culture Committee of the City Administration of Florence has been happily advertising the exhibition, on their own, alongside with the retrospective of Botticelli. The exhibition and the whole project were highly praised not only in Italy, but also in Germany and Switzerland.
The project also did bear important charitable cause, with conducting a special charitable auction in support of victims Fukusima nuclear plant disaster in Japan, especially children and their families. Michael Rogatchi in typical for him way did donate the whole sum of successful charitable auction sales to the special fund for the purpose in Japan.
There are plans in progress of continuing that interesting and worthy project in other places of Italy, starting from Rome, after 2021.