Faenza's MIC celebrates sculptor-architect Ilario Fioravanti on the centenary of his birth

From February 10 to April 2, 2023, the MIC in Faenza presents the exhibition 1922-2022 Fioravanti 100! Fuochi d’Amore, curated by Marisa Zattini, dedicated to the great sculptor-architect and artist Ilario Fioravanti (Cesena, 1922 - Savignano sul Rubicone, 2012). On this occasion ceramic works by the artist will be shown for the first time at the Faenza museum, celebrating a cross-section of his artistic production. An exhibition that joins the series of events of the broad project 1922-2022 “Fioravanti 100!”, conceived and organized by IL VICOLO, a cultural services and exhibition projects company, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth.

Ilario Fioravanti is one of the most interesting artists in the Italian art scene of the 20th century. From a young age he has been experimenting with different artistic techniques, starting from drawing through engraving and sculpture to embracing the figurative arts. Always fascinated by the use of fictile matter in Egyptian, Mesoamerican, Etruscan and African art he embarked on a career rich in contaminations between the contemporary and ancient worlds, which allowed him to range and produce an endless constellation of works in ceramics, polychrome terracotta, maintaining a special predilection for the “earth material.” His tireless research leads him to several solo exhibitions at the national and international level, such as in 2007 at the Koller Galéria in Budapest, and then in Brussels, in 2014, as part of the Semester of Italy’s Presidency in the European Union.

The exhibition aims to highlight a part of his production by exhibiting forty-six ceramic works divided into seven simple and historiated jugs and vases, sixteen plates dedicated to “beautiful women,” including two mythological and five half female busts. Also, twelve bas-relief, engobed vases and six large figures depicting Salome, Sappho, Anna with a dog, The Courtesan, The Big Dipper, and The Whore. An exceptional set of women’s faces, portraits that dialogue with one another like rediscovered archaeological finds, set up in the Project room, used for the museum’s temporary exhibitions, which brings the visitor to admire and interact directly with the beauty of the details, jagged edges, loose backgrounds, engravings and “a fresco” drawings.

“Fioravanti has staged his creatures,” writes MIC director Claudia Casali, “in a lively stage of varied humanity, curious, sympathetic, funny, sad and carefree, in snapshots of characters and situations caught in moments of life.”

The bilingual catalog, published by IL VICOLO Editore, is an intimate collection of the inner landscape on display in the Faenza exhibition, in which along with the beautiful images by photographer Gian Paolo Senni branch out the poetic contribution of poet, writer, playwright Fabrizio Parrini and Pier Guido Raggini’s 2007 interview with the artist.

“Ilario Fioravanti,” writes the curator, “has thus been able to capture the soul, the spark in the relationship with things. In his great weaving he related sacred and hermetic space, sacred and profane, history and allegory. In his works he transcended himself, came out of himself to bring out that part that could no longer be kept inside, for it would explode. In him the soul of the artist and the soul of the architect acted simultaneously, in a single archaic root that oriented his every choice.”

The exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of MiC - Directorate General, Education, Research and Cultural Institutes, Municipality of Faenza, Union of Romagna Faentina.

For info: www.micfaenza.org

Hours: Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed on non-holiday Mondays.

Pictured is a view of the installation at the Project Room.

Faenza's MIC celebrates sculptor-architect Ilario Fioravanti on the centenary of his birth

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