Roberto Innocenti's imaginative universe on display at Palazzo Medici Riccardi

Roberto Innocenti, Florentine illustrator is the protagonist of the exhibition Roberto Innocenti. Illustrating Time: The exhibition is organized at the Medici Riccardi Palace in Florence from February 22 to May 26, 2024. It is promoted by Città Metropolitana, curated by Paola Vassalli and Valentina Zucchi, and organized by MUS.E. The exhibition offers the public an opportunity to delve into Innocenti’s work at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The illustrator’s plates are accurate in detail and return the reader to an imaginative universe full of suggestions. Attention to characters, architecture, and landscape leads Roberto Innocenti to layout fascinating scenarios. Visitors will be able to appreciate more than eighty works by retracing the salient stages of his work and returning the red thread of both his work and the stories he illustrates.

Profoundly marked by World War II during his childhood, Roberto Innocenti showed an early interest in drawing, initially in graphic design and animation, then moving into illustration, becoming a leading figure internationally. Over the years, he has received numerous awards, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2008, becoming the only Italian illustrator to receive it. In 2020, he received the Maestro d’Arte e Mestiere award in the illustration and comics category. His first famous works date back to the 1980s with Cinderella in 1983 and Rosa Bianca in 1985, followed by a series of masterpieces that have made him world famous, such as his reinterpretations of classics like The Adventures of Pinocchio, A Christmas Carol, Nutcracker and others. His visual storytelling offers a crystal-clear vision of truth, exploring the effects of time and the depths of our living.

The catalog, published by Sillabe, will feature the curators’ essays for a contemporary reading of the Florentine artist’s work along with a text by Martino Negri, a scholar at the University of Milan-Bicocca, and a conversation with the curators.

“To render image the profound trait of the fable, even when it is cruel, requires uncommon sensitivity and artistry. Roberto Innocenti is also in this respect a great artist,” commented Letizia Perini, councilwoman of the Metropolitan City of Florence delegated to Culture. “His illustrative craftsmanship has delivered to us a rare synthesis between refinement and poetry, even when the fairy tale calls for smiles and irony. His Pinocchio and Cinderella express very well this interpretation of the fairy tale, which, in its particularity, neatly highlighted by the attention to every detail, is also a form of respect for the reader, not only for the child, the first recipient, but for the child and the adolescent who remains in the adult in need of that enchanted, participating, curious and moved gaze that reads the text and admires his illustrations.”

“Roberto Innocenti’s works are great literature, and they are for everyone, young and old readers alike,” explains exhibition curator Paola Vassalli “Recognized worldwide among the greatest contemporary authors, Innocenti also thanks to this exhibition, for which we pay tribute to the city of Florence, is no longer a stranger in his own land; today he can finally feel at home. One small big step remains to be taken, a step of civility as well as wisdom: to find a worthy home for his work. This is the challenge for his city; this is the commitment we ask of his and our country.”

“Roberto Innocenti’s plates are works of art,” comments Valentina Zucchi, curator of the Museo di Palazzo Medici Riccardi and co-curator of the exhibition, “They investigate space and time by giving us glimpses of the world-real or imaginary-and inviting us to read. Yes, his images are an invitation to visual reading, to that cognitive and aesthetic exercise to which we are, paradoxically, less and less accustomed: exploring his places, observing his characters, breathing the atmospheres that he so poetically knows how to render we grasp without the need for words the truths of history, the depths of reality, the vertigo of imagination. Roberto Innocenti teaches us to look, and he teaches it to each of us, because his works are works for everyone, born to multiply endlessly between the pages of his books, ready to be replicated endlessly and destined for the hands of anyone; a multiplication that instead of dividing expands their power far beyond the places of knowledge, the walls of houses, the borders of countries. This exhibition is an important cultural opportunity to admire the prototypes of his masterpieces live and to experience all the magic of his illustrations.”

About the artist

Born in 1940 in Bagno a Ripoli, Roberto Innocenti is the only Italian illustrator to have received the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2008, the prestigious Nobel Prize in children’s literature, second in history only to Gianni Rodari (1970). His numerous international awards include the Golden Apple from the Bratislava Illustrators Biennale for White Rose in 1985 and for A Christmas Carol in 1991, as well as the Gustav Heinemann Peace Prize in 1985. Self-taught, his works were first published in the early 1980s in Graphis Annual. Innocenti’s success is the result of his endless patience and perseverance. Today, his talent is appreciated worldwide. Figures such as John Alcorn, Rita Marshall, and, more recently, The Creative Company, have helped solidify his international reputation. This recognition is richly deserved, both for the man and for his talent. In Italy, his books are published mainly by La Margherita edizioni, thanks to the initiative of small publisher Alfredo Stoppa, who first introduced him to the country through the C’era una volta publishing house in Pordenone.

Roberto Innocenti's imaginative universe on display at Palazzo Medici Riccardi

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