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12 September 2024

After the success of the exhibition in the Frescoed Rooms of the Palazzo Comunale in Pistoia (May-June 2024), Pasquale Celona's works will be exhibited in the spaces of the piano nobile of Palazzo Guadagni Strozzi Sacrati, headquarters of the Presidency of the Tuscany Region, in Piazza del Duomo 10 in Florence. In fact, tomorrow, Friday 13 September, at 3.30 p.m., the exhibition Miraggi (Mirages) by Pasquale Celona, an artist who has been involved in contemporary art for almost half a century, also promoting it internationally with the Florence Biennale, will be inaugurated.

Curated by Jacopo Celona - together with Melanie Zefferino, who has written the publication accompanying the exhibition - the temporary anthological exhibition set up in the elegant spaces of the 15th-century Palazzo Guadagni Strozzi Sacrati presents more than 37 paintings by Pasquale Celona made in more than 40 years of his artistic career, ranging from still lifes, figures, landscapes, seascapes and his beloved sails.

Soft colours, suspended atmospheres, fantastic views and a good deal of imagery hovering between dream and reality characterise the painting of Celona, who has always remained true to his way of understanding art.

‘A journey into the pictorial universe of Pasquale Celona; this is what we wanted to undertake as the Region of Tuscany by hosting an extraordinary exhibition of his most evocative works, reflecting more than 40 years of his career,' says Eugenio Giani, President of the Tuscany Region. ’A bridge between past and present, ranging from his still lifes, landscapes and settings, capable not only of fascinating the viewer by transporting him into his highly symbolic world, but also of triggering reflection and raising questions about the reality that surrounds us. For this reason, it is a privilege to be able to exhibit in the rooms of Palazzo Strozzi Sacrati the canvases of an artist who has known how to root himself in the pictorial tradition, always proposing a personal and innovative vision capable of imposing himself on the contemporary scene. I am sure that the most expert visitors, as well as simple enthusiasts, will be able to grasp in this exhibition the great depth that lies behind the apparent simplicity of the artist's images, his figures and his abstractions: an opportunity to be transported to pictorial worlds suspended between realism and dream’.

Born in 1943, Calabria by birth, but Tuscan by adoption, Pasquale Celona in 1995 together with his brother Piero conceived and founded the Florence Biennale, the International Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Design (of which he is now President) that in 14 editions has achieved exciting results and that next year is preparing to experience another extraordinary moment with the 15th edition and over thirty years of activity.

However, throughout all this time, Celona has never forgotten that he is first and foremost an artist, extremely attentive to everything around him: as Melanie Zefferino has noted, on his canvases Celona has transposed ‘his visions of landscapes, but also of figures and things suspended in an atmosphere between the real and the imaginary. Wandering among pastel-coloured clouds, fairy trees and iridescent sails, through his dreamlike visual narrative, Celona also recounts that, on the shores of the Ionian Sea, the ‘descendants of Magna Graecia’ still today erect huts - as ephemeral as they are evocative in the artist's paintings, as they take us back to summer evenings spent in our youth and imprinted in our memory, where the memory has taken on the blurred contours of myth. The artist collects and reinterprets the cultural heritage of the West,' continues the art historian, ’but also the cues of the 20th century and the contemporary world, infusing his paintings, through his particular use of light, with the colours and suggestions of Calabria, his birthplace, but also of Tuscany, his adopted land. And he does this by observing, and at the same time reinventing through images, the world around him. The representations that derive from his artistic endeavours are as imaginative as they are elusive in their aesthetic value, hinging on a continuous search for harmony and beauty. These paintings are therefore admirable ‘mirages’, oils on canvas in which light becomes the corporeity of a fantastic universe of a thousand colours’.

The ‘Miraggi’ exhibition will continue until 6 October 2024 and can be visited with free entry, from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 4.30 p.m.; on Saturdays only from 10 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. Please reserve access to the palace to visit the exhibition by calling 055 4385616, Monday to Friday, between 9 am and 1 pm.

INFO EXHIBITION

Pasquale Celona

MIRAGGI

anthological exhibition

14.09.2024 - 06.10.2024

Opening 13.09.2024, 3.30 p.m.

Piano nobile of Palazzo Strozzi Sacrati

Headquarters of the Regional Council of Tuscany

Piazza del Duomo 10, Florence

Opening hours: MO-FR 10am-12.30pm and 2pm-4.30pm; SA 10am-12.30pm

Reservations: tel. 055 4385616 ( MO-FR 9am-1pm)

Free entry