An exhibition dedicated to the artistic works of Fulco Pratesi, founder of WWF Italia, architect, naturalist, illustrator, writer, journalist and a leading figure in Italian environmentalist culture.
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the birth of WWF Italia, the Museo di Roma in Trastevere presents Fulco Pratesi. Acquerelli Pionieri, a tribute to the artistic work of the founder of the environmental association in Italy and to the man who, more than anyone else, helped transform the relationship between Italians and nature.
The exhibition leads the visitor into a vast creative universe, made up of a selection of watercolours and drawings executed with surprising immediacy, illustrated notebooks compiled daily over decades and travel notes, revealing to the public the most intimate and personal side of Fulco Pratesi: that of the artist who observed, recounted and defended nature all his life, turning drawing into a tool of knowledge, emotion and civic commitment.
Architect, naturalist, writer, journalist, illustrator and populariser, Pratesi did not only found WWF Italia. For over forty years he was its main point of reference, leading some of the most important environmental battles in the country: from the historic Operazione San Francesco for the protection of the wolf to the campaigns in defence of the Marsican brown bear and the national parks, up to the commitment that contributed to the birth of the 1991 framework law on protected areas. His public activity, however, always stemmed from a simple and personal gesture: observing nature, getting to know it, loving it and defending it. The same gesture found in the works on display in the exhibition.
Pratesi's watercolours do not merely depict animals and landscapes: they recount the profound bond he built with the living world. The species that populated his conservation campaigns – migratory birds, wolves, bears, cetaceans, sea turtles, fish and Mediterranean fauna – return in the works on display as protagonists of a visual universe capable of combining scientific precision and poetic wonder. Many of the subjects depicted in fact belong to the ecosystems that Pratesi concretely contributed to protecting over the course of his life.
For generations of Italians Fulco Pratesi was the very face of environmentalism. Through television, books, articles, meetings in schools and activities in the WWF Oases, he brought thousands of people closer to discovering nature, conveying the idea that protecting the environment begins with knowledge and attention to what surrounds us. This exhibition restores the roots of that message, showing how his commitment to conservation was born first of all from a gaze capable of wonder.