With just over four months to go before the opening of the exhibition, the Florence Biennale Management announces the names of the recipients of the ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico’Lifetime Achievement Award: in the context of the 20th anniversary of the exhibition, the prestigious award will be given to the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, who will be honoured on Friday 13 October.
El Anatsui, a multi-award-winning artist present in prestigious public collections on four continents, will be in Florence to personally receive the ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico’ Lifetime Achievement Award for Art. Using different materials and techniques, the artist has woven memories and meanings into his representation of the essence of Africa, inspiring a global audience through the rediscovery of the inextricable relationship between man and nature. His art is masterfully expressed in Trains of Thought, Pot of Wisdom, Strips of Earth's Skin and countless works of great visual impact made by creatively experimenting with salvaged materials as well as metals, plastics and textiles, with which he has shown the world that ‘the poverty of the materials used in art in no way precludes the telling of wonderful stories of great richness’.
