Curated by Massimo Bertozzi and Antonio Natali
September 6-November 24, 2019
Palazzo Cucchiari – Giorgio Conti Foundation
Via Cucchiari, 1 – Carrara
Hours: September Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m.-12 p.m.; 4-8 p.m. | October and November Tuesday to Sunday 3-7 p.m. Visits in the morning by appointment only. Closed Mondays.
Info: 0585 72355 – info@palazzocucchiari.it
Entrance fee: 5 euros
Catalog: Bandecchi & Vivaldi
Sponsor: RED Granites
Media partner: Windows on Art
On Friday, September 6, 2019, opens the solo exhibition of Tuscan artist Andrea Martinelli Storie di uomini e ombre. Works 1999-2019 curated by Massimo Bertozzi and Antonio Natali.
Andrea Martinelli (Prato, 1965) is one of the most established Italian painters and draftsmen who has distinguished himself for his original research, rich in reflections and critical insights on the theme of shadows, the face and the human figure.
The major anthological exhibition, which traces the last two decades of his career, will be set up on the two “noble” floors of Palazzo Cucchiari. For the occasion, about seventy works will be exhibited, many of them of large format, which will make up six sections, whose themes will be The Face, The Figure, The Grandfather, The Drawing, The Self-Portraits and The Night.
The matrix of all the artist’s work is drawing, which is a distinctive feature of all Florentine art and of the great Tuscan artists. Drawing, in Martinelli’s human figures and faces, is understood not only as a graphic exercise, but as an expression of a figurative language and thought that explores human depth. The series of drawings in the exhibition, rich in meticulously delineated details, although born as preparatory works to the pictorial works, are configured precisely because of the maniacal attention to detail as autonomous works.
Among the works on display, some of which are previously unpublished, are the triptych exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2011 and a selection of the self-portraits presented to the Uffizi Gallery on the occasion of the donation of the self-portrait “La Bocca,” which became part of the Vasarian Corridor collection in 2013.
One room will be devoted to the monumental portraits of his beloved grandfather Dino, a theme that made the artist known to the general public in 2005, after the solo exhibition Il volto e l’ombra at the Museo della Permanente in Milan curated by Flavio Arensi.
Antonio Natali writes in the catalog essay, “To have portrayed his grandfather’s face in works of such large dimensions-I am thinking of the works of 2004 and 2005-seemed to me a sign of his desire to combine (so that each would be exalted by the other) the monumentality of the images with the strength of his feelings of love, but perhaps above all of esteem for a figure who had played a considerable role in his human formation.”
The exhibition will be enriched by the photographs of Martina Jones Lombardi, the artist’s muse and companion, which depict Martinelli in moments of work and intimacy in his studio.
Finally, on the occasion of the exhibition, Tommaso Santi ‘s 2019 short film “A Tale from Silence” will be presented to the public for the first time. The film investigates the artist’s work and the people he portrayed, through suggestions, life stories and anecdotes.
Andrea Martinelli (Mistràl) was born in Prato on March 12, 1965, the city where he currently lives and works.
After graduating from the Porta Romana Art Institute in Florence, he won the Tito Conti prize in 1988, thanks to which the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence awarded him as a scholarship an atelier in Piazza Donatello for the duration of five years. During that period he created a series of works entitled Senescenze, which attracted the attention of art critic and historian Giovanni Testori. Thus, between 1992 and the following year, imposing portraits of the elderly and his grandfather Dino were born, in which the artist concentrates with singular skill on the merciless and obsessive definition of somatic features. In these works emerges the strong focus on drawing, a technique that over the years acquires a predominant interest in his research. In December 1993 these works were brought together at the rooms of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, and then, the following year, at the Compagnia del Disegno in Milan with a catalog text by Maurizio Cecchetti.
From that time he embarked on an important exhibition activity in Europe, which brought his works to solo shows in Strasbourg at the European Parliament, the Frissiras Museum in Athens, the Scheringa Museum in Amsterdam, the Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen, Germany, the Fondation Rustin in Antwerp and the Museo della Permanente in Milan. He exhibited in 1999 at the 13th Quadriennale in Rome, on this occasion he was awarded by the Chamber of Deputies with the acquisition of a work that became part of the Collection of the Italian Parliament. He participated in the International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2011. In 2011, just in conjunction with the Venice Art Biennale, the Italian Pavilion, directed by Vittorio Sgarbi, promoted a solo exhibition of her work at the Pecci Museum in Milan on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. For this exhibition, Betty Wrong and Terna Group, directed by Elisabetta Sgarbi, are producing a documentary entitled Andrea Martinelli-Lotta silenziosa. The exhibition, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi and Marco Bazzini, will also feature photographs by the great photographer and friend Gianni Berengo Gardin. In 2013 the artist donated to the Uffizi Gallery, at the behest of Director Antonio Natali, his self-portrait entitled La Bocca. For the occasion, in the Sala del Camino of the Uffizi Gallery, a solo exhibition is set up in which, in addition to the donated self-portrait, the drawings and preparatory sketches are also presented, accompanied by Gianni Berengo Gardin’s black-and-white shots taken during the preparatory work on the work. In the same year at the Museo Civico di Palazzo Pretorio in Prato, the artist’s hometown, the exhibition Hyper-portraits is presented. The World of Andrea Martinelli, an experimental exhibition in which the artist’s works become the subject of video-interactive installations created by Digital Contemporary Museum, an exhibition conceived and created by Elisabetta Rizzuto, who from that moment on became his faithful collaborator. In 2015 Martinelli made Mistral, a short film directed by Alessandro Pucci. The film premiered at the Center for Contemporary Art in Prato. In September 2017, Le Lettere Publishing House in Florence published a book of the artist’s diaries entitled “Il volto, l’ombra, la memoria – pagine di diario 1992/2017.” This book, edited by Stefano Crespi for the Atelier/ Laboratorio series, is presented first in Florence at Gabinetto Vieusseux, and then in Prato at Galleria Farsetti. In March 2018, an anthological exhibition entitled L’ombra, gli occhi e la notte curated by Vittorio Sgarbi with contributions from Moni Ovadia and Paolo Crepet is inaugurated at the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino.
He has been a member of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence since 2004. Among the signatures that have accompanied his exhibitions are Flavio Arensi, Marco Bazzini, Luca Beatrice, Mario Botta, Carlo Castellaneta, Maurizio Cecchetti, Paolo Crepet, Michael Draguet, Franco Fanelli, Marco Goldin, Gerd Lindner, Ada Masoero, Alda Merini, Antonio Natali, Edoardo Nesi, Moni Ovadia, Vittorio Sgarbi, Edward Lucie Smith, Marco Vallora, and Sandro Veronesi.
Info: www.andrea-martinelli.it
