Art & Culture archivos - Within Florence

Cloisters of Florence: the great scape

17 enero, 2019 / By: Paco Neumann

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Florence does not stand as a vulgar Renaissance theme park, but rather as an infinite source of beauty and art, an open-air museum in which emotions grow by every minute. As I walk through the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella, San Lorenzo, San Marcos, Santa Croce or Santo Spirito, peace and solitude seem very tangible to me. However, what most hypnotizes me is rather more radical. In these religious courtyards, with their gallery portrayed on all four sides, it is easy to feel as if you had left this world, not minding at all how to return, while you are busy imagining your next sins and who will be part of them.…

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Art & Culture

Franco Zeffirelli Museum, seven decades of treasures

14 enero, 2019 / By: Paco Neumann

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The career of Franco Zeffirelli as cinema director, designer and producer of operas, theatre, cinema and Italian television has been honoured since October 1 with a museum in the city centre, where the old Court of Florence used to seat. “The venue houses seventy years of treasures collected and made alive,” says the director’s son, Pippo Zeffirelli, executive vice president of the foundation managing the artist’s legacy. The museum houses more than 250 masterpieces by Zeffirelli among sketches, drawings, paintings, costumes and even the planning of a great project that never took place: the film adaptation of The Divine Comedy. The exhibition, divided chronologically into prose narrative, theatre, opera and cinema, reflects upon the development of theatrical installations and film productions, through themes and authors, together with fixed images, exemplifying all the main stages of the artistic career of Zeffirelli.
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Art & Culture

“The Cleaner:” Marina Abramović at Palazzo Strozzi

10 enero, 2019 / By: Paco Neumann

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Florence is alive and wants to express itself. Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi presents a retrospective of world-wide acclaimed performance artist Marina Abramović. The show opens its doors on September 21, the same day that L’Eredità delle Donne festival begins. During four months, till January 20, 2019, Florence and particularly the Palazzo Strozzi hosts an exhibition that pays tribute to the fifty-year career of one of the heavyweights of Action Art. She is the first woman that has a “solo exhibition” at the Palazzo Strozzi.…

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Art & Culture

Primo Conti, exhibition at Villa Bardini in Florence

3 enero, 2019 / By: Paco Neumann

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The current exhibition at Villa Bardini, “Fanfare e silenzi. Viaggio nella pittura di Primo Conti,” is dedicated to the Florentine painter Umberto Primo Conti. Thirty years after his death, the show wants to illustrate and celebrate the artistic career of Conti, painter, composer and writer who belonged to the Italian avant-garde movement Futurism. In a chronological itinerary through the rooms of Villa Bardini, the display is divided into eight thematic sections, that correspond the different phases of Conti’s artistic career. Besides that, his oeuvre has been contextualized through the dialogue with artworks by other artists — teachers, friends, classmates … — connected with his creations. This relational exhibition responds to Conti’s own attitude, as he wanted to preserve not only his legacy but also the collective memory of an artistic period as extraordinary and flourishing as the Florence prior World War I. Until January 13, 2019.
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Art & Culture

“BANKSY – This is not a photo opportunity,” Banksy at Palazzo Medici Riccardi

21 diciembre, 2018 / By: Paco Neumann

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There is no doubt that if Banksy had lived during the Renaissance in Florence, the Medici would have been his patrons — they were the Maecenas of most of the art produced in Florence at that time. Any case, supposedly, Banksy artworks do not belong to anyone, but to the cities public space where he intervenes. However, the system devours everything, yet the supposed “anti-system” expressions as the graffiti made by Banksy. A proof of this is the exhibition organized at Palazzo Medici Riccardi, opened until February 24, 2019. Curated by Gianluca Marziani and Stefano S. Antonelli, the show brings together twenty images of Banksy’s most iconic pieces, those that won world fame due to its thematic: capitalism, war, surveillance, or massive migratory movements.…

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Art & Culture

Museo Nazionale del Bargello: mecca of Renaissance sculptural art

28 noviembre, 2018 / By: Paco Neumann

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Florence is not only beautiful on the outside; to rival its wonderful landscape and streets it also offers endless interior attractions. Since 1865, the Bargello National Museum has exhibited the most important collection of Renaissance sculpture in the world. The Medici gave the building in the sixteenth century to the bargello or head of the police, so he could use it as a prison. In fact, it was in its cortile, one of the most outstanding in the whole country, where executions took place. The site currently hosts works of Giambologna, Donatello, Benvenuto Cellini, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Brunelleschi and Michelangelo.
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Art & Culture

CLET: the street artist behind the “customized” traffic signs in Florence

18 noviembre, 2018 / By: Paco Neumann

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Street art does not survive in Florence as much as in Berlin. However, it has its representation with Clet Abraham (1966, Brittany). He has lived in Florence since 2005 and has today a shop and atelier in the neighbourhood of San Niccolò. His actions in the urban furniture, consisting of customizing traffic signs with stickers, bring nothing but joy to all visitors. CLET converts traffic signals into works of art without altering their function. He was first accused of abusive invasion of the public space in May 2017. The attractive French artist has been convicted by an Italian court to pay a fine of EUR10,400 for one of his works (L’Uomo comune) on the bridge alle Grazie.
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Art & Culture

Casa Guidi, poet Elizabeth Barrett´s home in Florence

17 noviembre, 2018 / By: Paco Neumann

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Visiting a house-museum always embraces a closer emotional approach to the artist who lived there than just simply observe the works displayed in the neutral and dehumanized rooms of a museum. Casa Guidi was the Florentine residence of poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning for the most part of their married life. Located in the heart of Florence, the apartment has elegant main chambers with an 18th century decoration style and essentially maintains the same furniture that in the Brownings´ age. They resided here for fourteen years, between 1847 and 1861, and these interiors served as inspiration for some of their greatest poems, like Casa Guidi Windows (Elizabeth Barrett, 1851), inspired by her struggle for freedom.…

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Art & Culture

The house of Piero Bargellini, a key figure during “l’alluvione di Firenze 1966”

3 noviembre, 2018 / By: Paco Neumann

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The Arno River severely overflowed on the 4th of November, 1966, causing what is commonly known as “l’alluvione di Firenze”. The city of Florence and part of Tuscany were inundated by the floods, causing an impact affecting the economic and cultural environment of Florence. Fortunately, as November 4 was a bank holiday, many businesses were closed and a large part of the population was at home, thus avoiding an even bigger disaster. Nevertheless, 101 people died, 5000 families lost their homes and 6000 businesses had to close. The deluge also destroyed and/or damaged countless works of art, prominent buildings and books. The damages could be repaired thanks to the efforts of Italian citizens, international committees and foreign donors. Piero Bargellini (1897-1980), writer, historian, politician and intellectual, was the mayor of Florence in that difficult moment.
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Art & Culture

Cappella Brancacci, the Sistine Chapel of Florence

1 noviembre, 2018 / By: Paco Neumann

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Beyond the streets crowded by the omnipresent tourists looking for Florentine gems from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, there are less exploited corners of great historical and artistic richness as the Brancacci Chapel, also known as the “Sistine Chapel of the first Renaissance”. The paintings on the walls are among the most popular and influential frescoes at the time. They are distributed in two horizontal levels along the chapel, which is part of the Carmine church and convent, founded in Florence in the mid-thirteenth century by a group of Carmelite monks from Pisa. Located in Piazza del Carmine (Florence-Oltrarno), the Cappella Brancacci is one of the oldest monumental buildings in Florence. The frescoes illustrating the life of Saint Peter are masterpieces by Masaccio and Masolino, painted between 1425 and 1427, just in the early years of the Florentine Renaissance. Later on, Filippino Lippi was called to complete Masaccio’s chapel decoration, which had been left unfinished due to Masaccio’s death in 1428.
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