Florence on March 25 celebrates the ancient Florentine New Year with some events open to all. On this day, the Catholic Church celebrates the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and, in honor of the Virgin, from the Middle Ages up until 1750 this date decreed the beginning of the civil year in Florence.…
From the artistic to the bucolic; from fashion photography to everyday documentary snapshots, this is the artistic journey of Carlo Cantini, a contemporary Florentine photographer and one of the best Italian photographers of the 20th century. On display until March 17 at Villa Bardini, Carlo Cantini. Between Realism and Imagination exhibits seventy photographs, inspired by Berengo Gardin and Mario Giacomelli, which document some of Florence’s most significant events of the last fifty years of the past century. His photographs document Florentine streets and countryside everyday scenes. Besides that, Cantini´s work is connected to the Pitti fashion shows, theater, contemporary art, enchanted gardens and allegorical nymphs, classical nude paying tribute to sculpture, and architecture. All in all, Cantini´s œuvre is a constant search for equilibrium between realism and imagination.
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The first comprehensive retrospective devoted to Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) will be on display in Florence from March 9 to July 14 at Palazzo Strozzi, with an accompanying presentation at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo brings together masterpieces by Verrocchio from collections around the world, contextualized by works from his forefathers and peers, as well as by the pupils he worked intensively with, including Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Sandro Botticelli.…
The years from 1915 to 1927, which Salvatore Ferragamo spent in California, are the source of inspiration for the new exhibition hosted by Museo Salvatore Ferragamo, focusing on the presence of Italians in that area and their influence on various sectors, from art to craftsmanship, and in the nascent film industry. The exhibition begins with the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where the Italian Pavilion designed by Marcello Piacentini consolidated the Americans’ appreciation for Italian art and architecture.…
Following in the footsteps of Callas success, Lyric Dance Company presents a renewed version of Caravaggio. Amor Vincit Omnia by choreographer and artistic director Alberto Canestro on January 25 at Puccini Theatre. Canestro has created an immersive experience connecting the audience with the dancers in a single space. The dancers will be surrounded by Caravaggio paintings, the 17th century master of chiaroscuro. Thus, the most representative works of the painter will be projected on the premises of Teatro Puccini. The choreographer has codified through dance the paintings’ emotional power and strength, bringing three-dimensionality to the pictorial compositions. The music has been composed by Enrico Fabio Cortese, whose style combines symphonic scores with electronic beats.
Caravaggio. Amor Vincit Omnia (Lyric Dance Company) – January 25, 2019, 9p.m. – Teatro Puccini – Via delle Cascine 41 – 50144 Florence
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It is obvious that Florence has a thousand faces, this is something that stands out as soon as you get there. It has so much historical and architectural background that if you wanted to go into detail, it would take hours round a corner. During my autumn escape from daily routine, I was carried away by the streets and wandered around with pleasure, climbing, descending and crossing them. I found out that autumn had not even begun in Florence, therefore it seems like October is the perfect time to visit the city so one can feel the end of summer, take an Aperol spritz while enjoying a relaxed atmosphere surrounded by terraces full of people.…
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.…
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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My Portuguese parents arrived in the US with nothing but the will to succeed. I fell in love with art, history, and architecture at a young age and longed to see the works of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, and Botticelli. Being firstborn to poor immigrants meant that I grew up with few prospects—Italy may as well have been the moon.…
Florence has a special ability to surprise. Until January 6, 2019, the capital of Tuscany hosts the F-light, the yearly festival of lights that animates the Florentine Christmas illuminating more than fifteen monuments and places across the city through light projections, video mapping, artistic installations or complex colorful light games. “F-light your mind” is the motto of the festival and this year pays homage to Leonardo Da Vinci advanced thinking in the 500 anniversary of his dead. Here the light is a metaphor for the triad intelligence-culture-enlightenment of which Leonardo was standard bearer as an artist and a man of science. Ponte Vecchio, which works as a central axis of the festival, Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Piazza Santa Maria Novella, Basilica di San Lorenzo, Novecento Museum, Piazza Santo Spirito, gates and towers of the city are the scenarios of this event that also includes cultural and educative encounters.
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