From 1990 to 2004 Palazzo Fabroni, building of the 18th century in the heart of Pistoia (Tuscany – Italy), had an important role in the planning of exhibitions of both Italian and international artists, like Roberto Barni, Enrico Castellani, Giuseppe Chiari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Giuseppe Uncini.
After few years of works of renovation, from 2004 to 2007, Palazzo Fabroni has now reopened and houses the exhibition of Claudio Parmiggiani, supervised by the art historian Jean Clair; the exhibition goes over the artist’s International experiences and represents one of his highest achievements.
Many and meaningful have been the intuitions which, from the mid 60s, have been connoting in an early, very original and innovative way his research; as well as obstinate has been his determination to pursue independence within the Italian artistic context, in a lonely path, intentionally out of any group or classification; however this has not meant estrangement and has not prevented him from crucial encounters with other protagonists of contemporary art. With them he shared that path which, from the zeroing of the representative painting, has led through different ways to a new art grammar. His language comes out from associations of images, able to provoke real mind short-circuits.
During the years, side by side with extraordinarily powerful and evocative works which have been object of lectures and critical essays by well known personalities from different fields, philosophy, art history, literary, he alternated with works of absolute radical vision and environmental dimensions.
The Delocazioni (from 1970), works made by using fire and smoke, are his most powerful images of absence; Terra (1988-89), a huge terracotta sphere with the artist s hands imprinted on it, given back to the earth and buried in the cloister of the Mus e des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, is a tragic and desperate gesture; Il faro d Islanda (2000), the tall, solitary, radiant steel tower, a metaphoric self-portrait of the artist, erected in the desolate and deserted land of Iceland, a light of hope in its immense geographical remoteness.
In many occasions Parmiggiani has also created works for public areas, museums, galleries, religious buildings. In the twelve rooms of palazzo Fabroni Parmiggiani he shows twelve new works, specially made and created through an extraordinary free use of materials which contribute strongly, in a real inner journey, to perceive them as a unique great work, as a unique mental object. The itinerary consists of a succession of spaces and the artist gathers the diversity of each one and creates new and vital connections with his work.
The works exhibited are visible only in conditions of natural light, since artificial lighting has been purposely abolished in order to highlight in the space that particular feeling and that particular emotion only the slow passing of light and shade on things can create when observed.