Farewell to Giampaolo Talani, the artist of departures

Painter and sculptor Giampaolo Talani passed away today in Pisa after a long illness. He was born in San Vincenzo, in the province of Livorno, in 1955, and was best known for his Departures, the large fresco that decorates the wall of the large gallery of the Santa Maria Novella station in Florence: it is a monumental work depicting a crowd of travelers on their way, and was made between 2003 and 2006. A versatile artist, characterized by a figurative style that looked to the historical avant-gardes of the twentieth century (mainly expressionism and futurism), he had exhibited in several venues: at the Venice Biennale in 2011, at the Uffizi in 2008, at the Casa del Mantegna in 2015, and in numerous other contexts, in Italy and abroad (in 2009 he was invited to Berlin for the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of the wall).

He had trained at theAcademy of Fine Arts in Florence and leaves behind many works: his is the cycle of frescoes that decorates the church of San Vincenzo, the Sermon of St. Bernardine on the facade of the Bishop’s Palace in Massa Marittima, the sculpture of the Sailor at the port of San Vincenzo, the equally monumental Man Saving the Sea at Giglio Island (a work celebrating the rescue of the shipwrecked Concordia by the local population), as well as two busts of Garibaldi (one at the Quirinale and the other at Palazzo Madama) made for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy. The first general catalog of his work had been published in 2015. “The real death of an artist,” Talani had said, “is where the search ends, where certainties, arrivisms or illusions submerge doubts.”

Farewell to Giampaolo Talani, the artist of departures

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