Pisa celebrates street art: 45 international artists and over 70 works on display, with live performances

It opened on December 14 at Palazzo Blu in Pisa and will be open until April 3, 2022, the exhibition Attitude | Graffiti writing, Street art, Neo Muralism, curated by Gianguido Grassi, produced by Start - Open you eyes and produced by Fondazione Pisa, under the patronage of the Municipality of Pisa, the Province of Pisa, the Region of Tuscany, the Regional Council of Tuscany, and with the support of the University of Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore and Scuola Normale Superiore Sant’Anna.

For the first time in Tuscany, a generation of artists, mostly in their 40s, is presented, who after starting out as street artists in the streets, are now working with a refined language, in continuity with the rupture and avant-garde art of the 1960s. All in an exhibition-event with live performances. On Saturday, December 18 at 5 p.m., thehappening with four of the artists involved will be held at the Palazzo Blu Auditorium.

The project involves forty-five artists from around the world known for their urban art. The exhibition brings together the various forms of urban art, from graffiti to abstractionism, with seventy-four works on display, all from the artists’ archives and important collections. From the library, we continue to the rooms on the fourth floor of the exhibition venue to tell the story of the various declinations of urban art, from the more rebellious and more overtly social to the monumental art of more recent institutional manifestations.

“Aptitude indicates an innate or acquired disposition, physical, psychophysical or psychic, that makes it possible or facilitates the performance of a certain activity; in street slang it indicates the inclination and approach with which the painter approaches his expressive action,” the curator says. “Many are the personal attitudes and vast are the artistic conclusions of a phenomenon that is already vast in geographical terms; that is why it is not easy to give a definition and move within a container that has as sure common elements that of gathering artists who begin to paint in the urban context in a spontaneous way and the convergence of the energy of the street with the creative component. With the expression urban art, therefore, an attempt has been made to create a broad container capable of collecting various experiences that have taken place over time and continue to coexist today.” “Simplifying,” he adds, "we could identify main categories: Graffiti Writing, Street art and Neo Muralism, which in turn branches into figurative and abstractionist."

“With the exhibition,” stresses Stefano Del Corso, President of the Pisa Foundation, “we face the challenge of bringing street art inside the museum, through the project curated by the Start Association - Open you eyes. The works that are exhibited in the rooms of the permanent collection are the result of the expression of a group of artists who belong to the cultural phenomenon called street art, contemporary artists accustomed to creating in the most diverse urban contexts. This exhibition may be complementary to the major exhibition on Keith Haring, which has already been open for a few weeks, and aims to bring the narrative of urban art, of which Haring was a noble father, to the present day, exploring contemporary trends and the multiple messages they convey. The desire of the Pisa Foundation is to enrich the narrative of contemporary art and offer a contribution to the debate on this art form that is not always the subject of univocal judgment.”

In fact, Palazzo Blu is currently hosting an exhibition dedicated to Keith Haring, the father of street art who created the great mural Tuttomondo in Pisa in 1989, and the exhibition fits right into this context.

Many of the artists featured in Attitude have painted in Pisa and Tuscany, helping one of the most disruptive and global cultural phenomena of the last forty years to take root right here: proof of this is the Porta a Mare neighborhood with its painted walls.

The following are the artists in the exhibition: 108, 2501, Abbominevole, Aec Interesni Kazki, Alberonero, Aris, Francesco Barbieri, Giorgio Bartocci, Beast, Francisco Bosoletti, C215, Ciredz, Dado, Duke1, Egs, Eron, Etnik, Farao, Gaia, Hitnes, Imos, Joys, Rae Martini, Massimo Sospetto, Moneyless, Moses and Taps, No Curves, Oker, Okuda San Miguel, Ozmo, Alice Pasquini, Peeta, Phase2, Porto, Rough Remi, Run, Rusto, Rusty, Sbam, Shepard Farey, Obey, Soap The wizard, Solomostry, Sten and Lex, Tellas, Zed1, Zedz.

The exhibition will be interspersed with four live performances, one per month. Each artist who offers a performance will create a solo show that can be visited over the course of a month in the Focus Room. The first will be 108, among the leading exponents of abstract post-graffiti; his language is an alternation of painting, muralism, sculpture, and sound. At Palazzo Blu he will present The Museum of the Absurd, a site-specific installation that allows interchangeability between the individual fragments that compose it, giving the idea of becoming and passing, of the transformation of a place. Then it will be the turn of Joys; this will be followed by a live performance by 2501 and finally by the New York-based street artist Gaia. At the end of the exhibition, artists from the international urban scene will arrive in Pisa to paint new walls and enrich the city with public works.

For more info: www.palazzoblu.it

Hours: Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Pictured is the 108 Museum of the Absurd.

Pisa celebrates street art: 45 international artists and over 70 works on display, with live performances

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