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A blue neon sign appeared in 2010 on the ‘short’ façade of the Uffizi in Florence. ‘All art has been contemporary’ read that curious installation by Maurizio Nannucci, which also underlined an indisputable truth: all art has been contemporary. But the added value of that artistic initiative, was not so much the installation as the context, because placing the neon phrase in the degraded suburbs of any western city would have had no weight compared to what, on the contrary, it achieved on the short side of the Uffizi, on one of the best known and most studied architectures in the world, because it was revolutionary.

And it is always a question of context, to have thought that such a provocation could take place in Florence, the city of the Renaissance par excellence, where genius and patronage have experienced an unrepeatable sublimation for at least a couple of centuries. As if to say: it takes courage to conceive, design, realise and exhibit such an installation in Florence... At the Uffizi, then...

But history - the history of art in particular - contradicts us. For example, Giorgio Vasari in his Lives recalls that in the middle of the 13th century, ‘certain painters had come from Greece to Florence ... Cimabue, having begun to begin this art that he liked, often escaped from the school and spent the whole day watching the work of those masters ... continually practising ... he went far beyond the drawing and colouring of the masters who taught him’.

Even Cimabue, therefore, went to school to admire the art of the Byzantine masters who frescoed the Gondi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella. And it was contemporary art, not ancient, nor classical.

This is why on the banks of the Arno it is easier - if not more necessary - to remember that all art has been contemporary, and that Florence, precisely because of the original relationship between art and civilisation - the same one that prompted a Grand Duke to transform a palace intended only for offices into a museum so that the works of art in it ‘would remain for the ornament of the State, for the benefit of the public and to attract the curiosity of foreigners’ - is the right context for an exhibition of contemporary art.

It was precisely to this Florentine peculiarity - which in the world of culture (of art in particular) now represents a true brand - that Pasquale and Piero Celona referred in 1997, when they conceived and held the first edition of ‘Florence Biennale - International Exhibition of Contemporary Art’. A courageous choice, theirs, both because of the cultural climate in Florence and because of their determination to go it alone, shaping the event edition after edition according to the profound forces of world art and opening up more and more to the needs of the artists who participate today.

But why should an artist from Argentina, China, Australia or Germany exhibit their work in Florence?

Because in Florence one perceives a relationship with art that is different from anywhere else. It is a question of excellence, originality and cultural depth that has never failed.

In each edition, ‘Florence Biennale’ has proposed a specific theme, with illustrious guests and career prizes, with meetings and performances, with discussions and revelations, but always with Florence as a backdrop - and as an added value - to the event that this year crosses the finishing line of twenty years.

Marco Ferri