For the subsequent few months, the Roberto Casamonti Collection may be visited contained in the historic Palazzo Salimbeni-Bartolini, a Renaissance gem in Piazza Santa Trinita. During 2026, the gathering will transfer completely to its new house in Palazzo San Giorgio, on Lungarno Serristori, though the precise date has not but been introduced. For now, guests can benefit from the distinctive fascination of its Renaissance setting.
A Palace Built on Clever Tricks and Poppies
The story of the palace itself is as intriguing because the artworks it now homes. Built within the late 1500s, Palazzo Salimbeni was commissioned by the rich service provider household of the identical title. According to legend, the Salimbeni managed to finance its development via a intelligent—and considerably doubtful—enterprise trick.
In Venice, they invited rival retailers to a lavish dinner the evening earlier than their ship was resulting from dock. During the feast, the rivals got poppies laced with opium. The following morning, none of them turned up on the port, leaving the Salimbeni free to safe the perfect offers. This is why the poppy motif is discovered all through the palace and why the household adopted the motto Per non dormire (“Not to sleep”).
When the constructing was later remodeled right into a resort within the early Twentieth century, Gabriele D’Annunzio stayed there and expanded the phrase into Per non dormire, per non morire (“Not to sleep, to not die”).
Once the Casamonti Collection relocates, the palace will proceed to function an exhibition venue for short-term reveals, preserving its function as a cultural landmark in Florence.
From Arte Povera to Anselm Kiefer
The exhibition opens with Arte Povera, a motion born in Italy within the late Sixties, at a time of social unrest and political transformation. Artists resembling Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jannis Kounellis, and Alighiero Boetti rejected the polished aesthetic of post-war modernism, turning as an alternative to humble supplies—wooden, stone, iron, fabric—reflecting each financial uncertainty and a need to reconnect artwork with actual life.
Their works, fragile but highly effective, may be learn as a response to the commercial growth and its alienation, a method to get well an authenticity that the earlier era’s summary and geometric rigor appeared to have misplaced.
The themes have been later taken up by Anselm Kiefer. In his monumental work Ave Maria, Kiefer pays homage to the earth itself, layering straw, lead, and pigment in a means that remembers and transforms the experimental strategies of the Arte Povera era. His observe reveals how the dialogue between matter and which means, first opened within the Sixties, continued into later a long time with new historic and cultural resonances.
The Legacy of Land Art
From there, the trail results in Land Art, a motion that emerged primarily within the United States within the Nineteen Seventies, when artists began to see nature itself as a canvas. After the novel gestures of Arte Povera, Land Art took the reflection additional: if the sooner era had questioned the function of supplies contained in the gallery, Land artists challenged the very boundaries of the museum by carving into deserts, drawing on earth, or staging interventions in open landscapes.
Among the works within the Casamonti Collection is a vital piece by Christo & Jeanne-Claude, main figures in Land Art and environmental artwork. It is the preparatory mission for The Pont Neuf Wrapped (Project for Paris), created in 1980: a big drawing on cardboard combining pencil, charcoal, pastel, ink, graphite, and a map, encased in plexiglass. The work paperwork the artistic part of one among their most iconic interventions, when in 1985 the Pont Neuf in Paris was completely wrapped in golden material, reworking town’s oldest bridge right into a spectacular and ephemeral monument for 2 weeks.
Pop Art and the Pulse of a New Age
The climax of the exhibition is the Pop Art part, the place the power of the late Twentieth century bursts into vivid colours and daring types. If Arte Povera had reacted to industrial alienation and Land Art had regarded to nature, Pop Art responded to the explosion of mass media, consumerism, and common tradition. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s frenetic compositions, full of phrases, diagrams, and fragments of anatomy, embody the uncooked vitality of New York within the Eighties, whereas nonetheless carrying the reminiscence of earlier avant-gardes like graffiti and jazz improvisation.
Joan Miró reinterpreted conventional portray strategies with radical innovation, utilizing indicators, symbols, and vivid colours to open new pathways for abstraction. The go to then continues into the corridor of contemporaneity, the place the languages of efficiency and video artwork come to the fore. Here we encounter Marina Abramović’s exploration of the physique as a medium, Vanessa Beecroft’s reflections on identification and collective rituals, Maurizio Cattelan’s ironic provocations, and Bill Viola’s immersive video works, which mix Renaissance spirituality with cutting-edge expertise.
Until November 1, guests to Florence also can discover one other exceptional exhibition: Les Fleurs. Soutine, De Pisis and Chagall, devoted to the theme of flowers in Twentieth-century portray. Hosted at Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the present brings collectively masterpieces by Italian and worldwide masters, providing a poetic counterpoint to the daring modern voices of the Casamonti Collection.
An Experience Between Past and Future
Seen collectively, these works kind not solely a survey of latest artwork but additionally a chain of influences: Arte Povera reacting in opposition to modernist formality, Land Art increasing on Arte Povera’s materials experiments, and Pop Art capturing the immediacy of mass tradition whereas drawing on the summary languages developed earlier than. Within the historic partitions of Palazzo Salimbeni-Bartolini, this development turns into even clearer: every era reshapes what it inherited, turning previous constraints into new artistic freedoms.
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Eirini Lavrentiadou is an actress and singer, born in Thessaloniki in 1992. She lives in Florence, the place she skilled on the metropolis’s Theatre Academy and the Fiesole School of Music. She has carried out in classical Greek and European performs, labored with worldwide administrators and firms, and appeared in live shows starting from opera to jazz. She contributes to Florence Daily News as a author.
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