The Belgrade audience has a unique opportunity to get through 200 photos of Italian authors and thirty different expressions on the whole, studious, and attractive way, get familiar with the whole Italian neorealism in the medium of photography.

The exhibition The Years of Neorealism - Guidelines of the Italian Photography for the very first time, not only in Belgrade, but in this part of Europe presents the Italian photographic neorealism, equally important as that on film and literature. However, the concept of Italian neorealism has been usually associated with art of film (L. Visconti, V.de Sika, A. Latuada, R. Rossellini) and neorealism in the film is much more known. The Belgrade audience has a unique opportunity to get through 200 photos of Italian authors and thirty different expressions on the whole, studious, and attractive way, get familiar with the whole Italian neorealism in the medium of photography. Some of the authors of the works are: Gianni Berengo Gardin, Charles Bevilaqua, Pierregiorgio Branzi, Brembilla Alessandro, Giuseppe Bruno (Bepi), Alfredo Camisa, Tranquillo Casiraghi, Mario De Biasi, Mario Giacomelli, Nino Migliori, Federico Patellani, Franco Pinna, Fulvio Roiter , Enzo Selario ....

Within the photographic art the neorealism indicates the group and the movement of a new generation of Italian photographers, who with a strong social and critical engagement tried at the moment to express the new Italian reality after 1945th. Photography becomes a document of an epoch which is about the difficulties of everyday life, such as backwardness of the country and its provincial spirit, uncomfortable presence of clergy, hypocritical habit, and intrusive forms of backward policy - not indifferent accepted and expressed pessimism, but different shades of tinted hearted satire to irony. It shows the beauty of existence in the perspective of changes and the new social order. Groups La Bussola (1947) and La Gondola (1948) attempted to separate the photo from consumables photo journalism and through the authentic language of socially engaged art, to speak about the real agony of the Italian people in this crucial period. All of this, places the Italian photo neorealism within the significant chapter in the general history of photography.
 
The exhibition, which is owned by an Italian partner Centro Italiano della Photographic d'Autore in Bibbiena (Italy), was designed by Fulvio Merlak, Claudio Pastrone and Giorgio Tani, and has been also followed by the extensive monography with 240 pages and more than 200 photographs inside from studies whose authors are prominent Italian experts - Giorgio Tanni, Sauro Lusin, Cesare Colombo, Paolo Barbaro and Manfredo Manfroi. The Italian edition of enriched monography is followed by the publication / supplement containing the texts with translations and studies on the Serbian language, as well as two original texts of regional experts - Želimir KOŠČEVIĆ, art historian and art director of photo-gallery from Samobor Lang and Virgil Đuričin, director of the Center for Visual Art Batana from Rovinj.
 
The exhibition is a regional project implemented in partnership of five highly respected institutions: Batana - Visual Arts Center (Rovinj), Croatian Society of Visual Artists (Zagreb), Museum of Contemporary Art of Vojvodina (Novi Sad), Museum of Contemporary Art of Serbian (Banja Luka) and the Cultural Centre of Belgrade. Just the fact that the exhibition has been implemented as a joint project of the prominent institutions in the region gives it a special dimension, as in the recent past, there was no direct association and similar cooperation at this level with so many partners in the region.
 
The Belgrade Cultural Center together to the exhibition, also organizes and a series of film screenings of Italian neorealism cinema in Cinema Hall in st. Kolarčeva 6, as well as guidance through public exhibitions, lectures and discussions on film, literary and visual creativity of Italian neorealism and outcomes and parallel processes in other European and world communities that period.

One of the most important representations of this project will be the guided tour and a lecture by the initiators of the project, Želimir KOŠČEVIĆ, the art historian and art director of Photo Gallery Lang from Samobor, on Feb 4 and 5th.
 
General notes

Neorealism in art developed as a cultural movement during and after World War II in Europe, primarily in cinema and literature.
In literature the term neorealism began to be used at the end of 20ties of XX century, marking the aspirations of the time or the New Reality. Literature giants such as the size of Moravia, Alvaro, Gramsci, Pavezea ... were the first critics of the Italian reality and active opposition to fascism.
 
Within the cinematography from 1942nd to 1953, the task of film directors was to oppose to regime mystification and rhetorics with direct, almost documentary contact with reality. Therefore, the film kept the story mostly among the poor working class and reflected the difficult economic and moral frameworks of life post-war Italy. Filming the occupied Rome, frustration, poverty, women post-war times, despair, expatriates, retirees ... a whole other world whose existence was not recognized by the fascism.
 
Talking of the photography, during 30ties of the last century, it became an important means of communications services, primarily in the form of photo reportage, and its function is in the service of fascist propaganda. The situation changes after the war and already in 1947th, there arised numerous photo associations that developed the language and culture through photos that had been published in illustrated magazines and books, affirming the photo as art.