The fan is the protagonist of the exhibition that the Hermann Geiger Cultural Foundation organizes and promotes in Cecina (Livorno) starting from 31 March, in its exhibition spaces in Piazza Guerrazzi 32. The exhibition “Ventagli. Creazioni d'Artista” offers visitors a selection of 90 pieces from the collection of Luisa Moradei, a Florentine scholar and collector.
Thus we find employed wood, iron, terracotta, paper and cardboard, copper, travertine, plastic, mirrors, feathers, fabric, leaves, lead, ceramic and wire mesh, materials that transform the fan object, as we are used to thinking of it , and decline it in works of painting, sculpture, photography, engraving, jewellery, weaving and more.
In many cases the result, despite the multiple diversifications, remains faithful to the original shape while in others it reaches purely allusive effects, distorting the shape itself to the limits of its recognizability.
THE ARTISTS – There are just under a hundred Italian artists represented in the exhibition, from big names to young emerging artists, each of whom, having let himself be influenced by the history and uses of the fan, has recounted this object with his own stylistic code which, thus interpreted, he abandoned the daily sphere to immerse himself totally in the field of art.
We have Elio Marchegiani with his harmonious weights, Tino Stefanoni who presents the essentiality of the form in the linearity of the fan; Gillo Dorfles with drawings that emerge from the unconscious; Pietro Gilardi who for the occasion abandons sculpture to translate the natural element that characterizes his works onto paper. There is also a fan by Emilio Isgrò with the artist's typical erasures and the abstract expressionism of Giacomo Soffiantino.
In the work of Pino Pinelli, master of analytical art, the flight of red clouds in the space of the canvas recalls movement and lightness; Giosetta Fioroni has created a huge fan that explodes powerfully and decoratively but which stylistically distances itself from her sixties and seventies pop works; Riccardo Guarneri instead presents a very delicate cardboard screen, in line with his aniconic and analytical artistic research.
Among these big names are then inserted young artists who offer still different readings of the opera fan, also thanks to the use of unconventional materials such as the plastic cutlery deformed by the heat used by Donato Landi; optical fibers combined with black lace and ostrich feathers by Federico Laguzzi; the half-wheel of a bicycle by Claudio Cammilli and Mariana Prioli; the porcelain of Nicole Grammi.
Throughout history the fan, originally an object of daily use and with practical functions, has been transformed by acquiring real artistic connotations and sometimes symbolic meanings.
The real fashion for the fan as an indispensable and refined complement to women's clothing exploded in the eighteenth century and continued throughout the nineteenth century. The expressive potential of this accessory did not escape the interpretative fantasies of the painters who, during the Belle Époque, began to experiment with the small format of the lunette page, transferring their artistic inspiration to it. Thus the custom of painting a fan took over and then gave it as a gift to friends or loved ones on birthdays or other anniversaries.
This illustrious 150th-century tradition of dedication inspired Luisa Moradei to collaborate with contemporary artists who made possible the creation of this unique corpus. The project began about twenty years ago and involved a total of over XNUMX artists who created unique and original works for her. These are "ad personam" fans which attest to the link between the author and the dedicatee and which contribute to creating an ideal continuum in the fascinating world of the fan, highlighting its communicative value and artistic identity, as was the custom two centuries ago.
The exhibition “Fans. Creazioni d'Artista”, curated by the Geiger Foundation with the coordination of Federico Gavazzi and with the collaboration of the collector Luisa Moradei, will remain open with free admission, every day (including holidays), until 13 May, from 16 to 20 pm .
Fans. Artist creations
March 31 - May 13, 2018
Hermann Geiger Cultural Foundation
Piazza Guerrazzi 32, Cecina (LI)
