2023

Artists' Curtain
The Curtain by Lorenzo Puglisi

"Silenzio"

(2023)

Exhibitions 2023

La Repubblica - article (29 dec. 2023).

Opening to the public of the new Artist's Curtain

Tuscany Hall Theater - Florence.

The work Silenzioby Lorenzo Puglisi will be presented by the art critic Marco Tonelli.

Lorenzo Puglisi participated in the last edition of the Venice Biennale in the Syrian Arab pavilion and exhibited his work in front of past masters such as Caravaggio, Leonardo, Tintoretto, Michelangelo, creating innovative exhibitions such as in 2017 in Naples in front of Caravaggio's Seven Works of Mercy, in 2019 at the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie with Leonardo's Last Supper and in 2020 at the Basilica of Santo Spirito in Florence with one of his paintings "Crucifixion" in front of Michelangelo's wooden crucifixion.

Puglisi is the youngest artist called to create a work for this exceptional collection unique in Italy which, since 2005, has transformed the curtain of the Florentine theater into a large author's canvas with works to date by AldoMondino,CarlaAccardi,GetulioAlviani, MimmoPaladino, NicolaDe Maria, LuigiMainolfi, PinoPinelliand FabrizioPlessi;

and he is also the youngest among the artists currently exhibited in the 12 new rooms of the Self-Portraits collection of the Uffizi Galleries, with authors such as BillViola,Giuseppe Penone, Ai Wewei, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Anthony Gormley.

The work Silenzio is more appropriate than ever for a theatrical space, where the suspended time before the start of a show requires absolute and magical silence, and is the visible manifestation of black understood as darkness, deep night, state of the soul which precedes the moment of revelation and epiphanic illumination. In this case the curtain itself is already a spectacle and an apparition, in fact the emergence from a dense and impenetrable night of a distant trace of Tintoretto's Annunciation, of which only the faces and hands of the angel and the virgin can be seen. in the immediacy of the action, vibrant and still at the same time. The theatricality of the Venetian Master lives again in a total dramatic and tragic essentiality of shapes and colors in a void of iconography and atmosphere.

The most extreme and poignant thing a painter of our era can do today about the past time, about our present and our passions.

Puglisi says "when the curtain is about to open, but it's still closed, is the moment that heralds the beginning of something both grandiose and frightening, an extraordinary act, a revolution of the soul, in this case of a theatrical work, of entertainment. And it is the state and the effect that I look for in painting: silence, darkness, light, mystery.”
Puglisi is not new to similar interior excavations from ancient painting, and with this new curtain, the first of the collection of figurative nature, he reaffirms himself as one of the most original contemporary Italian painters, undoubtedly unique for the radicality of his bold dialectic between light and darkness.

Sipari d'Artista (Artists' Curtain) is a project of the Amici della Contemporaneità Association, created in 2005 by Claudio Bertini and Massimo Gramigni with the gallery owner Santo Ficara and the support of the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze Foundation.

PLACE : Tuscany Hall Theatre. Firenze

ADDRESS : via Fabrizio De André, 50136 Firenze

Opening : Friday 29 December 2023. 6.00 pm

Curated by : Marco Tonelli

FOR INFO : (+39) 055 6504112

E-MAIL INFO : info@tuscanyhall.it

OFFICIAL WEBSITE : www.tuscanyhall.it

6:04

Artist's curtains

In the silence designed by Puglisi
The new work for the Florentine theater realized by the artist

A new curtain for the Tuscany Hall Theather. The ninth of a series that the Florentine theater began collecting in 2005 thanks to the project "Artist's Curtains" promoted by the Amici della contemporanity: an idea by Claudio Bertini and Massimo Gramigni, with the gallery owner Santo Ficara and the support of the Cassa di Risparmio Foundation. This curtain, entitled "Silence", is presented to the public today at 6pm. It was painted by Lorenzo Puglisi, an italian artist who lives and works in Bologna. Lorenzo Puglisi (1971) is the youngest of the artists commissioned to create a work for this unique italian collection which, in eighteen years, has covered the stage of Tuscany Hall of signed canvases by artists Aldo Mondino, Carla Accardi, Getulio Alviani, Mimmo Paladino, Nicola De Maria, Luigi Mainolfi, Pino Pinelli and Fabrizio Plessi. These curtains are sometimes hosted by other theaters: now Plessi's one is at the Duse Theather in Bologna. «For the figuration of my curtain I naturally sought something that recalled theatricality. Here there is the idea of silence, which is exactly what happens before any show begins, before the theater takes shape and life", explains Puglisi, whose self-portrait - requested by Director Eike Schmidt - at the moment it is exhibited in the Uffizi Galleries. In this case also he is the youngest artists present in one of the twelve new rooms of the self-portrait collection, next to Bill Viola, Giuseppe Penone, Ai Weiwei, Michelangelo Pistoletto.

«With amazement I found myself hanging in the midst of this significant company. And with veiled satisfaction I reveal my joy to be there,” he says. And this is but one of Puglisi's ties with Florence. In fact, in 2021 his exhibitions at the National Museum of Latvia was organized in collaboration with the Uffizi Galleries. And the previous year Puglisi had exhibited his painting "Crucifixion" in the Basilica of Santo Spirito, in front of Michelangelo's wooden sculpture.

«I am a realist painter and I work serially themes that interest me», he continues. «In my works I carry out images on wood, on canvas, on metal following the baroque institution of darkness. A darkness from which faces, hands and feet emerge. It is my poetics, that of a realist painting in which darkness represents the natural condition in which we live." So also "Silence", twelve meters by six, is the visible manifestation of black, meant as a deep night, a state of the soul that precedes the moment of revelation, of epiphanic illumination. «In this case the curtain itself is already a spectacle and an apparition. In fact, the emerging from a dense and impenetrable night of a distant trace of "Annunciation", the masterpiece by Tintoretto (of which we can only see faces and hands of the angel and of the Virgin, caught in the immediacy of the action) is vibrant and still at the same time. Tintoretto's Annunciation lately is one of the subjects closest to my heart and on which I therefore frequently rework." The curtain for Tuscany Hall is the largest work that Puglisi has created.

«I painted it in pieces, which then were assembled by the expert hands of a seamstress who I drove a little crazy, because a work like this bends, it cannot be treated like a canvas.

It looks like a movie frame, but a sui generis one. And I think the viewer will be disconcerted. Which is one of the purposes of my paintings."

Sipari d'Artista TV news

Lorenzo Puglisi

Artist Curtain "Silenzio" - 600 x 1200 cm