The exhibition GIOVANNI HAJNAL On Dante's footsteps from reading to graphic sign will open to the public on November 13, 2021 at the Hendrik Christian Andersen Museum, directed by Maria Giuseppina Di Monte and belonging to the Directorate of State Museums of the City of Rome, directed by Mariastella Margozzi.

The exhibition, previously curated by Mariastella Margozzi and Laura Salerno at the Abbey of Santo Spirito al Morrone, now moves to Hendrik Christian Andersen's home-atelier to show the public the etchings created by the Hungarian artist Giovanni Hajnal who reinterprets in a the most engaging passages of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, on the occasion of the celebrations of the seven hundredth anniversary of the death of the Supreme Poet, are completely unique.

The bond between Giovanni Hajnal, a multifaceted personality who was able to engrave his name among the greats of contemporary art history and the Supreme Poet Dante Alighieri, was established, intertwined and never interrupted, thanks to a real love at first sight. At this juncture Hajnal undergoes a very powerful experience of existential enrichment, as well as a disturbing imaginative impression, of empathy with the work of the unreachable master. From that precise moment a fascination for the three Dantesque Canticles begins in Hajnal's compositional and iconographic imagination that he translates and transcribes the most remarkable, precious and significant passages, eternalizing them through his own masterful art of engraving.

From 1980 Giovanni Hajnal developed the idea of programmatically illustrating episodes that had literally bewitched him, thus enlivening the epic of Dante-themed engravings, feeling particularly close to the verses dedicated to his native land, Hungary, enucleand them, through a sign rigid, authoritarian and solemn, not only the imperishable sentimental bond with his country of origin but also the deep relationship between the poet and that extraordinary nation.