Calvino’s Tarot
In this closing event, we celebrate Italian writer Italo Calvino’s 1969 novel The Castle of Crossed Destinies, a literary experiment prompted by the author’s arrangement and rearrangement of tarot cards. Calvino would later describe tarot as a “combinatorial narrative machine”. The event will feature live readings with actor Marco Gambino and a rare screening of excerpts from Calvino’s filmed lectures On the Tarot in 1976.
Martina Mazzotta is an art historian, author and curator with a background in philosophy. She is presently an Associate Fellow at the Warburg Institute, where she is completing her research on the late Renaissance encyclopaedic collections (Wunderkammern) and their cultural afterlives. She has a strong passion for literature and for Italo Calvino’s visual imagination, which led to new discoveries during the preparation of the exhibition Tarot – Origins & Afterlives that she co-curated with Jonathan Allen and Bill Sherman.Marco Gambino is a versatile Italian actor based in London, with a career spanning theatre, television, and film. On television, Marco has brought his talent to acclaimed Italian and international series, including Young Montalbano, Emmerdale, The Boss of the Bosses, Squadra Antimafia, Romolo and Giuly, and, most recently, the critically praised Those About to Die. His filmography features titles such as The International, Il Traditore, Finally Dawn, Il Giudice e il boss. In addition to his work on screen, Marco is celebrated for his multilingual stage monologues, including Words of Honor, Othello’s Guilt, Maria Callas: The Black Pearl and more recently The Grey Zone a play by Geoffrey Williams from Primo Levi’s last book The drowned and the saved.
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This page was last updated on 28 April 2025
