Painting in Piazza del Popolo

Artists at work under the late afternoon sun

While Rome is a city unavoidably filled with art (and I mean that in a good way), the casual observer doesn’t often get the chance to see it created. Sure, all of our piazzas are, both in design and decoration, masterpieces of some Renaissance or Baroque rockstar, and we even have our fair share of contemporary works, not to mention the burgeoning street art scene, but we’re often only privy to the final product. That all changed for anyone wandering through Piazza del Popolo yesterday afternoon.  Art Kitchen, a Milan-based creative studio founded in 2007 to produce and develop exhibitions, artists, charity projects, and cultural events in the name of spreading art, creating experiences and rocking the world, brought their project “Una pagina bianca è una poesia nascosta” (A blank page is a hidden poem) to Rome on Sunday. First seen in Florence’s Piazza della Repubblica in April 2009, this itinerant, interactive exhibition made its inaugural appearance in the Eternal City when a giant canvas took over the west side of Piazza del Popolo from noon until dusk yesterday. Paint cans, brushes, and beach balls were scattered at will as the public was invited to partake in the artist Ivan’s vision to “liberate the people and take ownership of the piazzas with a self-managed space without rules or ruler.”

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