Aldo Mondino Lorenzo Puglisi - Le Grand Tour

For three centuries Italy was at the center of a unique phenomenon in European cultural history, the Grand Tour, an educational journey, cultural and human experience that artists of different eras undertook to experience direct contact with the richness of arts and antiquities of our wonderful country. At the same time, this year the cycling Tour de France will start from Italy for the first time in history: on 29 June Florence will start "Le Grand Boucle" which will also touch the cities of Bologna (30 June) and Turin ( July 1st).

This extraordinary event, the most followed sporting event after the Olympics and the football World Cup, is the opportunity to create a joint exhibition by Aldo Mondino and Lorenzo Puglisi, Le Grand Tour, which ideally and materially, as great artists of the past did ( Durer, Stendhal, Goethe, Mann to name a few) follows the Italian stages of the race: inaugurations on 29 June in Florence, with exhibitions at the Galleria Santo Ficara, in collaboration with the Teatro Cartiere Carrara (with the curtains created by the two artists) and at 'Hotel Guelfo Bianco and June 30th in Bologna at Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande in collaboration with Campogrande Concept.

The second part will take place in September in Turin and in October the Grand Tour will end like the cycling race with a grand finale in Monte Carlo. In this spirit of exchange and interconnections, painting, travel, the new and the ancient give rise to a unique exhibition of its kind, original and dynamic, rich in content, differences and affinities.

EXHIBITION INFO

TITLE: Le Grand Tour. Aldo Mondino - Lorenzo Puglisi

1st part  Florence / Bologna

LOCATIONS AND DATES:  29 June / 29 September, Florence

Inauguration: Saturday 29 June, 11.00am Galleria Santo Ficara, via Arnolfo 6L

6.00 pm Hotel Guelfo Bianco, via Cavour 26

edited by Valerio Dehò

Hours: Monday to Friday, 11.00/12.30 and 16.00/19.00

LOCATIONS AND DATES: 30 June / 30 September, Bologna

Inauguration: Sunday 30 June, 6pm Campogrande Concept - Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande, via Castiglione 7

edited by Silvia Evangelisti

Hours: from Tuesday to Friday, 11.00/12.30 and 16.00/19.00, Saturday by appointment

info on wattsapp at 3357681559

2nd part Turin / Montecarlo

September and October

Catalogue: Santo Ficara, with texts by Valerio Dehò and Silvia Evangelisti.

Aldo Mondino was born in Turin in 1938, where he died in 2005. In 1959 he moved to Paris, where he attended William Heyter's atelier, the Ecole du Louvre and attended the mosaic course at the Academy of Fine Arts with Severini and Licata. In 1960, having returned to Italy, he began his exhibition activity at the Galleria L'Immagine in Turin (1961) and at the Galleria Alfa in Venice (1962). The meeting with Gian Enzo Sperone, director of the Galleria Il Punto, was fundamental for his artistic career, with a partnership that still exists today. Important solo exhibitions are also presented at the Stein Gallery in Turin, the Studio Marconi in Milan, the La Salita Gallery in Rome, the Paludetto Gallery in Turin, a first retrospective at the Santo Ficara Gallery in Florence (2001). Among the main exhibitions we recall the two participations in the Venice Biennials of 1976 and 1993, the solo exhibitions at the Museum fur Moderne Kunst – Palais Lichtenstein in Vienna (1991), at the Suthanamet Topkapi Museum in Istanbul (1992, 1996), at the Jewish Museum of Bologna (1995), at the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna of Trento (2000). He was one of the most brilliant Italian artists of the post-war period. His talent was eclectic, irreverent and fantastic, and allows no comparison. Legendary character, he was a painter far from painters, conceptualist without being conceptual, close to Arte Povera without ever being part of it, exuberant, ironic, lover of games, of puns, out of time and history, in love with the East and Paris but rooted in his Piedmont countryside. A great painter and great sculptor, ironic, picaresque, intellectual devoid of any arrogance, he left a trace that is becoming more and more important year after year on the international scene.

Lorenzo Puglisi was born in Biella in 1971, lives and works in Bologna. Numerous personal and collective exhibitions in Italy and abroad, at the CAC La Traverse in Paris (2015), the Riso Museum in Palermo (2016), the Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples (2017), The Historical Museum in Bremen ( 2017), Villa Bardini in Florence (2017), the Casa Boschi Di Stefano Museum in Milan (2018), the Kulhaus in Berlin (2019), the Crypt of the King's Cross St. Pancras Church in London (2019), the Sacristy of Bramante in Milan (2019), Norman Foster's Moore House in London (2020), The Marino Marini Museum in Florence (2021). Among the main exhibitions we remember the participation in the Venice Biennale (2022), at the Uffizi Galleries (2023), while in 2019 he exhibited a six-metre-long oil painting on a panel depicting his vision of Vinci's Last Supper in Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo Da Vinci's death, with a monograph published by the German publisher Hatje Cantz (Berlin). In 2020 he opens an exhibition at the Basilica of Santo Spirito in Florence with one of his paintings, Crucifixion, in front of Michelangelo's wooden crucifixion. In 2021 he held an exhibition of his works at the National Museum of Latvia in Riga (Art Museum Riga Bourse) in collaboration with the Uffizi Galleries in Florence who lent Portrait of a Man, a masterpiece by Jacopo Robusti, Tintoretto. In 2022 his self-portrait entered the collection of the Uffizi Galleries. A monograph on his work published by Skira and written by Marco Meneguzzo will be published in 2023 as the summation of twenty years of his career. In October of the same year he held an important exhibition in London at the Brun Fine Art gallery, with which he works and collaborates.

The Santo Ficara Gallery has been operating in the art world for over 50 years and has set up over 100 personal exhibitions of artists and great masters, always present at the openings given their friendship and personal association with the historic gallery owner. Over the years, authors from different backgrounds have alternated with the great masters of the 20th century, from De Pisis to Rosai, from Sironi to Guidi, from Capogrossi to Magnelli: Accardi, Castellani, Gilardi, Uncini, Nigro, Paolini, Alviani, Salvo , Boetti, Turcato, Mondino, Mainolfi, Chiari, Ontani, Pinelli, up to more recent authors such as Asdrubali, Pugliese, Cacciola, D'Oora, Zazzera, Puglisi. The exhibitions are all documented in the series “Presenze in Galleria” published by Carlo Cambi.

The Teatro Cartiere Carrara, the new theater in Florence inaugurated in 2002 on the ashes of the old, glorious Teatro Tenda, which has become a very important cultural reference point, is the site of a unique collection of "designer curtains" created by Italian artists starting from 2005: the first author was Aldo Mondino, followed by artists such as Carla Accardi, Getulio Alviani, Mimmo Paladino, Nicola De Maria, Pino Pinelli, Luigi Mainolfi, Fabrizio Plessi, up to the last one created in 2023 by Lorenzo Puglisi.

The Hotel Il Guelfo Bianco is a boutique hotel inside a 15th century building in the center of Florence. The ancient original furnishings are combined with a prestigious collection of contemporary art works, with works by, among others, Festa, Dorazio, Corpora, Turcato, Carmassi, Perilli, Mondino, Fontana.

The Campogrande Concept company organizes exhibitions and events in the family palace, Palazzo Pepoli Campogrande, a historic building located in the center of Bologna, today also a branch of the Pinacoteca Nazionale where part of the Quadreria Zambeccari is exhibited, the only Bolognese aristocratic collection to be arrived almost intact to this day, with works by authors such as Donato Creti, Giovanni Maria Crespi, Titian, Ludovico Carracci, Guercino, Palma il Giovane.