GIOVANNI MARANGHI_MASTICA E SPUTA – OPERE

“MASTICA E SPUTA. OPERE
MARANGHI ALLA CHIESA DELLA SPINA”
Giovanni Maranghi presents a pictorial installation dedicated to the female figure in Pisa, inspired by the text of a famous piece by Fabrizio De André

PISA
Church of Santa Maria della Spina
February 12 – March 2, 2021
edited by Riccardo Ferrucci

PISA. Giovanni Maranghi’s art arrives in Pisa, in a magnificent place, the Church of the Spina (Lungarno Gambacorti), with a personal exhibition curated by Riccardo Ferrucci, in which the artist presents a pictorial installation dedicated to women.
“Chew and spit”, this is the title of the exhibition, freely taken from the famous song by Fabrizio De André “I saw Nina fly”.

“I have always tried – says the artist – since the years of art school to be a careful observer of everything that presented itself in front of me.
I think that the curious Being is always more ready than others to try to understand everything that happens around him.
I linked my life to the world of art, thinking that it is essential to steal, day after day, everything that the works of others show.
Stealing with the eyes a chromatic passage, a graphic sign, but also a musical note, a perfume or whatever an artist creates, is the basis for the growth and development of his own alphabet.
Using a metaphor not mine, I could say: eat it all, chew it well, keep what’s good for you, spit out the rest.
This reminded me of the refrain, “chew and spit” of the piece by De André that I borrowed for this exhibition ».

«The story of the Genoese singer – writes the critic Ferrucci – becomes the ideal score for a poetic journey by our artist who encounters personal memories and hidden harmonies in the words of the songwriter».

In fact, this exhibition was born from the taste of memory, as Maranghi himself explains: “In the second half of the 90s, in Castiglioncello, where I spent the whole of my family (wife, in-laws and two very young children) summer, he came from a town north of Kiev not far from Chernobyl, a guest of a family of close friends, a blond girl with blue eyes named Nina. All this happened for several summers in connection with an agreement with a humanitarian association.
During the first months of this year, forced by Covid into the home, it happened to me, like so many of us, to reopen old drawers, photo albums and other things lost in my memory.
Going back a few years, I must say that I have always loved listening to Fabrizio De André’s interpretations and among these a slightly melancholy one, but full of images for an attentive dreamer, was and is “I saw Nina fly”.

So, having that photo in my hand, listening to the song, I started imagining on Fabrizio’s swing, my Nina, the beautiful blue-eyed Nina who had made my little children fall in love.
Surely for her, spending the summer in Castiglioncello meant radically changing her life and discovering a new world different from hers, but despite this, her air of melancholy remained in her, a bit like the notes of De André.
So a way to link a beautiful memory, a beautiful song to beautiful children ».

The art critic Riccardo Ferrucci, speaking of Maranghi’s poetics, underlines the originality and modernity of the Florentine artist: “Giovanni Maranghi’s art is presented as one of the most original and authentic experiences of contemporary painting, women and his images remain important fragments, indelibly written on the canvas. His artistic progress is an invitation to dream and lightness, the one indicated by Calvino, who tells us about the author in his visionary diary, through a series of works that remain in the heart and belong to the viewer’s memory “.

«Maranghi – continues Ferrucci – is a visionary poet and, in his world, there are echoes of modernity and history, past and future, reality and dream, vision and meditation. The sensual forms of women become objects of desire, but also the telling of private and secret stories, mysteries to be deciphered. It is a narrative dimension that emanates from the story, which finds its first approach in drawing, a way to evoke dreams and demons, to begin to look reality in the face, a first annotation to his stories ».

Significant, in time of Covid, the message that, with this exhibition, the Pisan municipal administration launches from the words of the councilor for culture Pierpaolo Magnani says: “With the exhibition of Giovanni Maranghi – says the councilor for culture Pierpaolo Magnani – continues the exhibition activity at the Chiesa della Spina with one of the most successful Tuscan authors also at international level. The exhibition has a particular flavor because the three paintings are dedicated to the singer Fabrizio De Andrè and in particular to his song “I saw Nina fly”. This dialogue between a refined Tuscan artist and one of the great poets of our century, Fabrizio De André, is beautiful. The city continues to offer something to the minds of citizens and tourists as far as possible and safe, opening the Church of the Spina to the suggestions of contemporary art “.

The exhibition, organized by Casa d’Arte San Lorenzo for the Municipality of Pisa, in collaboration with C.R.A. Art Collection Center of San Miniato and the support of FuoriLuogo, boasts the patronage of the Municipality of Pisa and the support of the Bank of Pisa and Fornacette, the moral patronage of the De ANDRE ‘Foundation of Genoa and of the UNESCO section of Pisa.
The exhibition will be open, with free admission, until March 2, 2021, with the following hours: from Wednesday to Friday from 11:00 to 17:00.
According to the directives of the Covid-19 Protocol, access to the facility is allowed to a maximum of 20 people at a time.
For openings outside the indicated times, it is possible to make an appointment for a possible private visit.

For info: Casa d’Arte San Lorenzo – 0571 43595 – galleria@arte-sanlorenzo.it

“MASTICA E SPUTA, OPERE”
Personal exhibition of Giovanni Maranghi
Curated by Riccardo Ferrucci
Church of Santa Maria della Spina – Lungarno Gambacorti, 56125 Pisa
February 12 – March 2, 2021
info:
San Lorenzo Art House
0571 43595
galleria@arte-sanlorenzo.it
www.arte-sanlorenzo.

Biographical notes Giovanni Maranghi

Giovanni Maranghi was born in 1955 in Lastra a Signa (Fi).
He carries out his studies in Florence where he graduates from the “Leon Battista Alberti” Art School and then enrolls in the Faculty of Architecture.
He alternates his university studies with free nude courses at the Academy of Fine Arts. He frequents artists such as Primo Conti, Lucio Venna and Paulo Ghiglia.
At the age of twenty he presents a solo show at the San Ferdinando Gallery in Bari.
Among the most important events of these early years, we remember: the Spinetti Art Gallery in Florence (1982), the Dalders Gallery in Amsterdam (1985), the Diva Gallery in Brussels (1987).
The 90s opened with the personal “The armchair of dreams” at the Galleria Nuovo Sagittario in Milan. Then he will be the protagonist in the United States, in Carmel in California with a solo show at the Medici Gallery and again at Studio 205 in Chicago and in 1997 with a solo show in New Orleans.
The new century opens with “Gnacchi and Timparlini” at the Hotel Excelsior in Florence, an exhibition inspired by the poems of Fosco Maraini.
In 2001, Mondadori Editore dedicated an editorial to him in the periodical “Arte”.
He exhibited in Paris in 2003, with “Illusiones coscientes” at the Nichido Gallery.
Between 2005 and 2007 it is present in Siena, Pietrasanta (Lu), Matera, Florence (inside the Palazzine Lorenesi on the occasion of “Pitti Immagine”) and Forte dei Marmi (Lu). At the same time he exhibits in the Netherlands, France, Russia and the United States.
2008 “Extra – Large Barocco”, at the Basilica of SS. Virgin of Carmel in Piacenza. Then “Breakfast at Maranghi’s” at the Antico Spedale degli Innocenti in Florence.
2009 will see him in Palm Beach at the Faustini Gallery, at the Chetkin Gallery in New York, at the De Freo Gallery in Gothenburg (Sweden) and in Paris at the Tatiana Tournemine Gallery.
In 2010 he is in Sweden, in Simrishamn, at the De Freo Gallery and at Faustini in Forte dei Marmi.
In 2011 he was in Monte Carlo (Principality of Monaco) during the 69th Formula 1 GP, with an exhibition on the yacht “Planet 125” and the performance inside the NK department store in Gothenburg. Also in 2011 “Art Food – food for the mind”: on the occasion of the “Theater of Silence 2011” he exhibits in Lajatico (Pi).
Subsequently, he exhibited in Berlin, Paris and Montreux (Switzerland), then “Casta Diva”, presented by Antonio Natali, in the Sala delle Colonne in Pontassieve (Fi) and, the following year, in the Hall of Mirrors of the “Schoss Solitude “In Stuttgart (Germany).
With the exhibition “I am what I am” he is in Gothenburg at the “Sankt Jörgen Park Resort”, then exhibits “A story in white” at Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence.
In 2015 he is in Beijing with the “Capriccio Italiano” exhibition, then he is in Berlin and Stuttgart.
In 2017 “Background noise” at Ca ‘dei Carraresi in Treviso. He then inaugurates two solo shows in Florence and Matera, then he is still in Germany, in Stuttgart and in Reutlingen.
In 2018 he is at the Lu.C.C.A. -Lucca Center of Contemporary Art with “Immusione”, in Berlin with “One Night Only” and in Milan, at the Maimeri Foundation, with “she loves only me”.
In 2019 he is at the Sant’Agostino Hypogeum in Matera with “Full of you is the curve of silence”.
Maranghi lives and works in the province of Florence.