Severino Salvemini’s Watercolors of Abandoned Cinemas at Nuages Gallery

Over fifty small-format watercolors by Severino Salvemini, a professor of cultural economics at Bocconi University in Milan, are on display at Nuages Gallery in Milan. The works depict disused cinemas from around the world, some visited by the artist and others based on vintage photographs. Salvemini, not a professional artist but a scholar, describes the paintings as “urban ghosts, with a somewhat spectral intangibility, yet witnesses to a cultural and entertainment journey we all remember with great nostalgia.” The exhibition includes venues such as Cinema Minerva in Milan, Cinema Puccini in Rome, Cinema Fioriti in Fasano (Puglia), and Cinema Rex in Madrid. A volume published by Skira accompanies the show. This is not Salvemini’s first exhibition. The text by Colin in the catalog calls him “an explorer of territories without precise boundaries.”