Casa Museo Gino Covili - Pavullo nel Frignano (MO)

Gino Covili was born on March 21, 1918 on the Modena Apennines, namely in Pavullo nel Frignano, the town he will never leave, where he always lived and worked and where he passed away on May 6, 2005.
Covili was a self-taught artist, he never had masters, he never attended any schools, he began with outdoor real life-painting portraying the landscape. After this first experience Covili started to work hard in order to find his own language sharpening his mixed technique that will become his favourite.
He is considered tas the great “outsider” of Italian painting in the second half of the XX century.
His passion for drawing started when he was a child. His local territory was everything to him, both his school and his whole world. The land, the animals, the women, the men, they all talked to him and he studied them carefully, from every point of view because within that very same horizon each one of them had worked, suffered, fought, loved.
From 1950 to 2005 Gino Covili made more than 3000 works. This is how took shape a great fresco that illustrates and fixes the memory of a world, the world that was changing and fading away.
The painter has a mission: to remember and to preserve forever and this powerful art vocation strongly affirmed itself, in spite of all the obstacles and difficulties that marked his life. Covili’s endeavour was a unique one, he made it thanks to his courage and determination, often solitary, alone with “The Heroes” of his works.
A visionary artist, sometimes with a fairy-like touch, even in the most disturbing and dramatic works.
His painting style is more “epic” than expressionist. A painter of famous and powerful cycles: Zebio Còtal, Racconto Partigiano, Gli Esclusi, Donne Perdute, Francesco, L’Ultimo Eroe, Il Paese Ritrovato. Covili’s rich and authentic narrative as well as his artistic places combine with the Apennines that in the artist’s eyes become a symbol, a mythical, pragmatic, archaic and timeless land, which is out of time and becomes in the artist’s mind a “utopian land”. His art clearly expresses the need to voice and illustrate a world that is hard but also fragile, almost always marginalized, subordinate, therefore excluded from the usual paths of formal history. Covili left us in 2005 and the tale of his life continues through his works, always suggesting new interpretations and stories.
Today in Pavullo nel Frignano - 40 km south of Modena, 50 km west of Bologna, 50 km east of Reggio Emilia and 100 km north of Lucca - in the house that Covili wanted between the town and the forest.
Surrounded by nature, his house museum is open. Visitors will enjoy a full immersion in the most beautiful and meaningful works and masterpieces, right there where the artist lived, imagined them, painted them and preserved them for all of us.