Art workshop

While cultivating the artistic object, we truly make the human evolution. That is why I am interested in art: because I am interested in Man, in his intelligence. My greatest passion has always been the human soul.
At Lizori, each glimpse and each detail tell the story of “art and human evolution”, to quote OntoArte founder Antonio Meneghetti who, while giving the coordinates for the Hamlet’s recovery, read at once the requests that the place naturally underlines and exalts.

The bend of a low wall, the grace of the steps, the proportions, the details, the overall harmony, the elements of street furniture and interior design, the metal sculptures that – as “signs of Genius loci” – sign the corners just underneath a small arch or along the street, facing the Spoleto valley or anchored in mighty stones sustaining houses and parapets, painted ceramics next to wooden portals or a dining table in a garden.

Works by young talents were being exhibited in the Hamlet, ranging from painting to photography, selected through competitions addressed to students at local high schools and universities, just like diverse artists representing the OntoArte School were and still are being exhibited at Lizori, a place where international seminars on creativity have been organised since the 1970s, attended by true luminaries from outstanding American universities and Russian institutes of culture, or prizes that included narrative, journalism, essay writing, and various applied arts.

Artists from all over the world would start converging into the Hamlet for many years to come, since the first edition of the Lizori Prize in 1983.

It was 1987 when Russian Alexey Matiushkin (President of the USSR Association of Psychology and Director of the Psicopedagogic Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences) and American Frank Barron (professor of Psychology at the Santa Cruz University and founder of the ‘California Center of Applied Creativity’) were invited to Lìzori by Professor Meneghetti for a seminar on creativity; the talks between US and USSR were still quite aloof and lukewarm then.

Visited by scholars, artists, critics or show-business people, since the dawn of its rebirth Lizori has become the place of choice for the most diverse and qualified cultural activities, a vocation that the Hamlet has now more than ever all it takes to follow. The very Hamlet is a true open-air exhibition in fact.

And then there is music. When in summer the sunset sets the valley afire, drawing breath-taking backgrounds between earth and sky, listening to music at Lizori is nothing less than magic, and the same can be said when under its starry nights, either when a symphony orchestra is playing (like the West London Symphony Orchestra in 1998), a competition for young artists takes place (singers, composers, musicals), a Christmas bagpipe echoes or when it is the turn of amateurial singing performances or a feast among friends.

Since the inception of the hamlet’s recovery, its various spaces, either inside or outside, were conceived to this end. Through time, many were the concerts and shows that could find an unparalleled proscenium at Lizori.