Leading visitors into the many worlds of Primo Levi, getting them to discover the coherence that binds so many apparently distant literary adventures together, leading them into the laboratory of writing to visit the very personal world of one of the great figures of twentieth-century culture - here are the exhibits curated, promoted or recommended by the Center.
For the first time, an entire exhibit is being dedicated to Primo Levi the letter writer. Composed of documents that, to a great extent, have never been published, Chain of Correspondence offers visitors a vast interweaving of private correspondence that only today is being made public and that depicts Europe and Germany divided in two.
The first edition of If This is a Man, the book that Levi called his "first-born," was published after various other rejections by the little publisher, De Silva of Turin, directed by Franco Antonicelli. This precious first edition of the book published in 1947 was the feature of the exhibition that the International Primo Levi Studies Center offered for the first time at the Turin National University Library Turin November 14 – December 15 2018
For the first time in exhibition, a significative selection of copper-wire works made by Primo Levi – objects that are profoundly intimate and domestic – generally made out of copper wire, scraps and test materials coming from his work as a chemist.
This exhibit about Primo Levi does not take on its meaning through telling in other words what the great writer knew how to narrate so well in his own words. Instead, the exhibit uses the craft of assembling – the craft of his Faussone, the main character in The Monkey’s Wrench – to put together different languages – languages made out of artistic works, videos, documents and more words. These include words that come from the writer’s own clear and unmistakable voice, all this done in order to lead the visitors to encounter the many worlds of Levi and travel through them.
