The review brings together 120 of the most significant works of the production of the two painters of Spanish origin. The largest nucleus is represented by those granted by the heirs to which are added loans from important museums, prestigious foundations and private collectors with various unpublished works.
The project follows the successful initiatives carried out at Villa Bardini around the figures of Pietro Annigoni and Gregorio Sciltian and closes the dutiful study (also enriched by the monograph on Alfredo Serri) on the intricate and brief experience of the Group of Modern Painters of Reality (1947-1949 ).
The exhibition catalog – Edizioni Polistampa – contains contributions by Susanna Ragionieri, Giorgio Bedoni and an introduction by Philippe Daverio, honorary president of the Bueno Cultural Association based in Florence.
The exhibition celebrates and documents the creative and human story of two complex personalities devoted to the most authentic pictorial practice who, with originality, were able to approach the lively Florentine cultural environment starting from the forties, earning themselves in a long and tormented path of growth and stylistic adaptation, a leading role in the Italian artistic panorama of the second half of the twentieth century.
Against the backdrop of the profound cultural changes in the lively post-war years, marked by the antinomy of avant-garde and figuration, the investigation explores, for the first time, the existential symbiosis between the two brothers, highlighting, on the one hand, the points of tangency in delicate mechanism of reciprocal influences and exchanges of influences, especially in the formative years and, on the other, the phases of individual detachment and liberation which led to the respective stylistic maturity.
The brothers Xavier (1915-1979) and Antonio Bueno (1918-1984) arrived in Italy during the difficult war years after a childhood spent in Berlin, Geneva and Paris following their journalist father, and arrived in Florence in 1940, motivated by the study of the city's extraordinary Renaissance artistic heritage. But what should have been a short and temporary stay turned, for both of them, into a definitive and all-encompassing life experience because they spent the rest of their lives in the Tuscan capital.
The entrance ticket to the exhibition will allow art enthusiasts to immerse themselves in the naturalistic and architectural park of the Bardini Garden, one of the most fascinating places in Florence, from whose Belvedere you can enjoy a spectacular view of the city. There are four hectares of woodland, orchard and garden planted with roses, irises, as well as hydrangeas and other decorative plants, in contact with the medieval walls of Florence.
The "Garden of the three gardens", according to the definition given by the antiquarian Stefano Bardini, the last private owner, has an English-style wood, a Baroque staircase and an agricultural park, and is configured as an eclectic stratigraphy of uses and tastes, of fashions and uses. There are about two hundred pieces among the statues and vases surveyed, in addition to the small architectures, fountains and stone furnishings, which have now returned to their former glory, after a careful restoration that lasted five years.
Among the services, there is also a high quality restaurant which will guarantee the visitor a greater and more pleasant use of the garden itself.
The Bardini Garden. A short story
The history of the Bardini Garden parallels that of Florence.
The first phase of the Bardini green area dates back to the Middle Ages and sees the very rich Mozzi family as protagonists who, already in the thirteenth century, owned numerous houses and land including the so-called "hill of Montecuccoli", where the Garden now extends .
The ups and downs of the property, divided over the centuries into two portions, find a synthesis in 1839, when the Mozzi family reunites the two parts. However, during the 1880th century, the garden fell into inexorable decline due to the family's economic difficulties. In 1913 the complex, now in a state of abandonment, was expropriated from the last heir of the Mozzi family and purchased by the princes Carolath von Beuthen, who will be its owners until XNUMX, equipping the garden with Victorian-style elements.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, therefore, the property passed from the von Beuthen family to Stefano Bardini who, immediately after the purchase, renovated the entire complex to adapt it to his representative needs, giving it an even more eclectic style than it already had.
The garden, enriched by decorative elements of various origins assembled with the typical taste of the collector who excludes nothing, thus becomes a labyrinth of pitfalls for the art connoisseur who has difficulty recognizing the real materials from the fake ones, the reassemblies with modern insertions from the works authentic.
The construction of an avenue to reach the villa and the consequent demolition of the walled gardens, the unification of the buildings on the S. Giorgio coast and the construction of a loggia on the Belvedere, inserted between the two pavilions of the ancient Kaffehaus, are some of the more evident changes wanted by the antiquarian Bardini, in what was the most intense season of the garden.
In 1965, with the death of Stefano Bardini's son, Ugo, a long and complicated bureaucratic process regarding the inheritance began, which ended only in 2000 with the interest of the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, through the Fondazione Parchi Monumentali Bardini Peyron , who currently manages the property.
The exhibition, entitled DOUBLE PORTRAIT – Antonio and Xavier Bueno. Counterpoints to reality between avant-garde and figuration, curated by Stefano Sbarbaro, is promoted by the Bardini and Peyron Monumental Parks Foundation and the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze in collaboration with the Bueno Cultural Association.
