GUGLIELMO ACHILLECAVELLINI29.03 - 6.04.1977

A few years ago, the painter, collector, and art critic Guglielmo Achille Cavellini from Italy came to the conclusion that he had to help art historians in their future research about himself.
“Usually,” says Cavellini, “a talented artist is not appreciated until after his death. Only then does interest in his work and personality spread, when researchers begin to study the papers and photographs he has left behind. I don’t want that to happen to me.”
So instead, he has chosen to collect and present the important events of his life himself.

In the first catalogue he compiled, we find photographs from his childhood, his parents, and his siblings. Pope Pius XII’s blessing telegram for his wedding day is also included, as well as images from his military service. At the end of these historical documents about himself, there is a costume he wore while writing his autobiography. There is also an excerpt of what is assumed to be written about him in the World Encyclopaedia.

In the next catalogue Cavellini published about himself, we can read twenty-five letters to the world’s most prominent figures throughout history, in which they thank him for the attention he has shown by dedicating his book about them.
Here, Cavellini is placed within his “proper historical context.”
The first letter is dated 469 B.C. and addressed to Homer. The Evangelist John receives one as well, as do Leonardo da Vinci (1506), Shakespeare, Marx, and Darwin.
The final letter is sent to Mao Tse-Tung.

In his latest catalogue, Cavellini compares himself with the great artist personalities of the 20th century, demonstrating—through carefully composed photographs—similarities in physiognomy, in their way of posing, and in how they look at their wives.

The exhibition by and about Cavellini at Galerie S:t Petri in Lund is an exemplary and thorough study of how one can create a myth of oneself during one’s own lifetime.

The exhibition opens on March 29 and runs until April 6, 1977.
It is open weekdays from 15:00 to 20:00, and Saturdays and Sundays from 12:00 to 17:00.