Teaching and educating through painting: an exhibition recalls teacher Fiorani's method

From Aug. 31 to Oct. 12, 2019, 112 paintings made between the late 1950s and the 1990s by children from the elementary schools of Casciana and Camporgiano, where Giovanna Fiorani was a teacher, will be on display at the Civic Center in Camporgiano, Lucca. The Giovanna Fiorani - The Art of Being a Teacher exhibition will present this pioneering teacher who believed in an experimental and avant-garde system of teaching that enhanced the pictorial skills of her students.

A figure of didactic and professional excellence who taught in Casciana and Camporgiano from 1959 to 1990, teacher Giovanna Fiorani has been compared by some to Don Milani for her ability to combine her teaching work with her ability to read and interpret changes in the socioeconomic realities of a marginal territorial context such as that of the upper Garfagnana, while maintaining ties with the centuries-old customs and traditions of that peasant civilization; others have emphasized her affinities with Maria Montessori, who theorized the necessity, for every pupil, of free work.

Her method, based on reading everyday life and observing the landscape, has enabled so many children to express their personalities. Their works did not simply reproduce their surroundings, but freely developed every shape and color.

Teacher Fiorani did not put her hand into her students’ drawings except to teach the fluidity of tempera or to present the combination of colors in order to achieve a wider range of shades. However, she guided them in a quest that traversed the history of painting from Giotto to Bosch, through the Renaissance, and then focused on the twentieth century, making them experiment with realism, naïve art, expressionist deformation, Cubist Picasso, and the pure colors of Matisse.

His method and the works of his pupils were not confined within the confines of Garfagnana, but gained national and international recognition and awards, with exhibitions in Tokyo, Prague, Stockholm and New York. Since the early 1960s, moreover, many of these drawings have been housed in the PInAC, the Aldo Cibaldi International Pinacoteca dell’Età Evolutiva in Rezzato (Brescia): a museum that collects, studies and promotes children’s expressiveness, which has more than 7,400 works from 76 countries.

The exhibition is promoted by the Municipality and the Pro Loco of Camporgiano with the support of the CaRiLucca Foundation, the Municipality of Camporgiano, the Union of Municipalities of the Garfagnana and Impresa Edile Guidi Gino and the patronage of the Miur - Provincial School Office of Lucca and Massa Carrara, the Pinac Foundation - Aldo Cibaldi International Art Gallery of the Evolving Age and the Comprehensive Institute of Castelnuovo di Garfagnana.

Hours: Daily from 5 to 7 p.m.; Friday, Saturday and Sunday also from 9 to 10:30 p.m.

Free admission.

Teaching and educating through painting: an exhibition recalls teacher Fiorani's method

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