FLORENCE, ITALY – Saturday, 4 February, 2017 sees the inauguration of the Pret-a-porter exhibition by Giovanni Frangi, at Palazzo Fabroni. The museum of twentieth-century and contemporary art will host the exhibit curated by Giovanni Agosti, promoted and organised by the Municipality of Pistoia. The event is planned for Pistoia Italian Capital of Culture 2017. It will be open to the public until 2 April.
Pret-a-porter exhibition
Pret-a-porter is a project in which a place and its particular configuration become a crucial part of the artist’s creative process.
The eighteenth-century rooms of Palazzo Fabroni offer further possibilities of expression in Frangi’s work, which, as has already occurred in the past (for example at Villa Panza in Varese and at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Naples), finds inspiration from a particular place.
The exhibition is conceived entirely for the spaces hosting the works, several of which made specially for the event, including the one that occupies the gallery overlooking the drawing room on the main floor.
Each work is linked to the architectural and historical context of the building, in a compositional balance designed not only specifically for the rooms of the museum, but also in connection with two of the most illustrious examples of the Pistoian artistic heritage: the former Ceppo hospital with the Della Robbia frieze and the Romanesque church of Sant’Andrea with a pulpit by Giovanni Pisano.
The rooms of Palazzo Fabroni
The rooms of Palazzo Fabroni facing the glazed polychrome terracotta frieze on the facade of the Ceppo building display works in which colour is the protagonist, with images of forests, woods, rivers and water lilies. On the other side, the rooms with windows that give onto the two-tone facade of the church of Sant’Andrea are home to similar works but in which the artist has used only black and white.
Giovanni Frangi’s work is characterised by a continuous observation of natural phenomena, and has since 1997 unfolded in parallel with the research into the past and the present undertaken by the art critic Giovanni Agosti. The exhibitions arising from their dialogue have led to a series of books, which constitute milestones in their research into the possibilities of depicting a poetic idea, through graphic and constantly changing shapes.
Giovanni Frangi’s life
He was born in Milan in 1959; he lives and works in Milan. After graduating from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, he made his debut in 1983 in an exhibition at the Rotonda della Besana in Milan, Giovani pittori e scultori italiani, followed in the same year by his first solo exhibition at the Bussola in Turin. In 1986, he held an exhibition at the Galleria Bergamini in Milan: the catalogue contains a text by Achille Bonito Oliva.
This was followed by numerous solo shows in Italy and abroad, in public and private spaces, among which La fuga di Renzo in the Sala del Cenacolo at Montecitorio (Rome, 1998); View-Master at the Galleria Poggiali e Forconi (Florence, 2006); Pasadena, a cycle of engravings presented in 2008 at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Udine and successively at Frankfurt, Bolzano, Novate Milanese, Rapallo, Monza, Passariano and Padua.
Venue: Palazzo Fabroni, via Sant’Andrea 18 – Pistoia, Italy
Period: 5 February – 2 April 2017
Inauguration: Saturday, 4 February at 5.30 p.m.
Opening times: from Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. ǀ Saturday, Sunday and holidays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ǀ closed Monday
Ticket (including visit to the permanent collection of Palazzo Fabroni): full € 3.50 – reduced € 2.00
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