THE IDEAL ROPE TEAM
Giusto Gervasutti and Gabriele Boccalatte in Turin between the two World Wars
Curated by Enrico Camanni
In collaboration with Club Alpino Accademico Italiano – Gruppo Occidentale; Scuola Nazionale di Alpinismo “Giusto Gervasutti” – CAI Torino; Associazione La Fournaise
A large part of contemporary reflection on mountaineering today seeks to move beyond a purely heroic and individualistic reading of the mountains, in order to restore the complexity of the human, cultural, and symbolic relationships that have shaped their history. In this sense, it seems increasingly necessary to reinterpret the great achievements of the past as the outcome of bonds, partnerships, and shared visions, capable of redefining the very meaning of the mountaineering experience.
The exhibition The Ideal Rope Team. Giusto Gervasutti and Gabriele Boccalatte in Turin between the Two World Wars, promoted by the Museo Nazionale della Montagna and curated by Enrico Camanni, with coordination by Veronica Lisino and Marco Ribetti, opens to the public on April 2, offering an in-depth look at the human and mountaineering partnership between two legendary figures. The rope team thus becomes a metaphor for a bond grounded in trust, complementarity, and the sharing of risk.
The result of meticulous research and cataloguing, the exhibition is based on a body of documentary material recently acquired by the Museum. The core of the collection comes from the Andrea Filippi Archive, to which further materials have been added over time, including donations from the Gervasutti and Gagliardone families, expanding the body of evidence on mountaineering between the 1930s and 1940s. This ensemble is complemented by photographic albums on loan from the Boccalatte family, which vividly convey the intimate and shared dimension of the mountaineering experience, also including the figure of Ninì Pietrasanta, a leading protagonist of that era.
Through photographs, films, notebooks, and equipment, the exhibition constructs a dual portrait of Gervasutti and Boccalatte: the former, who brought the techniques of the sixth-grade Dolomite tradition to the Western Alps; the latter, a pianist and refined climber in whom strength and sensitivity intertwine. Together, they formed an extraordinary rope team, tragically interrupted by Boccalatte’s death in 1938 on the Aiguille de Triolet.
The exhibition retraces some of the most significant achievements of twentieth-century mountaineering, in the Mont Blanc massif and beyond, alongside activities in the Alpine “training grounds” around Turin. A multimedia itinerary places historical images in dialogue with contemporary perspectives, exploring the ongoing relevance of a still-living legacy through collaboration with the Club Alpino Accademico Italiano and the Scuola Nazionale di Alpinismo “Giusto Gervasutti” of CAI Torino. The repetition of routes first opened by Gervasutti and Boccalatte thus becomes an opportunity to reflect on the endurance of their legacy and the enduring appeal of routes that continue to engage with the present.
The exhibition thus emerges as a space for reflection in which the mountain becomes not only a stage for achievement, but a laboratory of relationships, memory, and possibility.
