On the centenary of the birth of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Civic Museums of Monza pay homage to the great intellectual through an exhibition entitled “Pasolini. Soul and Body ”curated by Elio Grazioli which collects a selection of shots by Dino Pedriali. Forty shots from the collection of the Luigi Rovati Foundation, dating back to October 1975, will be exhibited, which tell the intimate daily life of the writer and artist Pasolini, between his two houses in Chia and Sabaudia. Dino Pedriali was called by Pasolini himself to perform, in two sessions of two days each, a photo shoot that, according to the photographer, the great intellectual wanted to include in Petrolio, his latest novel, which was published posthumously. Pasolini never saw those photographs: the appointment to view the specimens was scheduled for November 2, 1975, the day his body was found at Lido di Ostia.

As in a film, the images show, with poignant intensity, the life of the eclectic Pasolini immortalized in different moments: while he writes, corrects, draws, but also in his walks through the streets. Pasolini finally allows the observer to enter the intimacy of his own room, where he is photographed naked, staging a studied surprise and pretending to be unaware of the presence of the external eye, a concerted situation between him and the photographer, so that the shots can appear " stolen ".

The curator Elio Grazioli comments: These are the latest photographs taken of Pasolini by a young admirer and already an expert and very determined photographer, but above all there is the direction, precisely in the cinematographic sense, of the writer who directs the photographer. The result is a strange intersection between reality and fiction, between exhibition and excavation, which captures Pasolini's body and soul in an indirect but revealing way. And when we know today that the shadow of death loomed over this singular constructed situation, the light of life acquires an unexpected magic.