INAUGURATION TOMORROW OF EXHIBITION ON PAUL VI AND ART

VATICAN CITY, APR 22, 1999 (VIS) - Cardinal Edmund Casimir Szoka, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, this morning presented at the Holy See Press Office, the exhibition "Paul VI - A Light for Art," organized by the Vatican Museums.

Cardinal Szoka explained that the exhibition will open to the public tomorrow afternoon in the Charlemagne Wing, at the left colonnade of St. Peter's Square, until June 12. Ninety-five portraits of the Pope done by 37 artists will be on display, he said, adding that the show's catalog "offers, through pictures and writings, a beautiful witness to the relationship between the Pontiff and the world of art."

The exhibition, added Francesco Buranelli, regent director general of the Museums, "is a homage to Pope Paul VI's great love for art, and a 'thank you' to contemporary artists who responded to his interest, generating in those years the rebirth of an art which would present once again the great theme of religiosity in its broadest sense."

"The passion which Paul VI had for the arts was abundantly reciprocated because the portrait art regarding him is immense and has an infinite number of facets. This exhibition, on the occasion of the first centenary of his birth (1897), clearly highlights this. If the work on show is a selection of the most important paintings, sculptures and drawings, the complete list of his portraits numbers six-hundred, which gives an idea of the emotional impact which the personality of this Pontiff and his sensitive noble figure had on artists."

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