Slava’s Snowshow:a classic in the XX century theatre

Winter is closing up opening the way to spring.

What’s better  than celebrating  the  changeover of seasons with “SnowShow “ by Slava Polunin?  The extraordinary Russian artist   is  just now landing in Florence at the Teatro Verdi.   His clowns and magic balloons  will conjure up hidden and neglected worlds  up to Sunday the 2 0th of March 2011. Even if the setting  is  an icy background its snow warms  up the heart- somebody said. This fairytale   speaks to us of the eternal existential  issues: dream, hope, wish and disillusionment. Continually playing on the borders between art and life, the performance builds up a theatrical event, made up of   tragedy and comedy, cruelty and tenderness.

 “The Times “has defined it  a show of rare beauty, absolutely not  to be missed and ”The Indipendent “a  simply unique masterwork,  which fills the eyes with joy.  Slava Polunin   can successfully   carry us into a suspended time. With our  eyes full of wonders        in front a snowfall we are enthralled by a continuously changing show which  skillfully mix  music, images and sound. The protagonist  is  Asisyai,  an original,  gentle and poetic character who has not forgotten the lessons  of Leonid Engibarov,  Marcel Marceau and Charlie Chaplin. Because of  his noble family background Asisyai is able to leave the circus and the street and get with full honours onto the stage in spite of his oversizedly funny yellow overall  and his clownish  red slippers.  The magic of the theatre , the overcontrolled gesture of the clown turn  his melancholic solitude  into a metaphor while the great snowball he  pushes forwards becomes a sort of myth of Sisyphus on the notes of Carmina Burana.
Why not enjoying  the magic show this weekend? You might take the opportunity of exploring Florence and its superb monuments as well.

For accommodations in the centre of Florence, we would recommend our www.tuscanyholidayrent.com selection of apartments, and invite you to visit http://www.tuscanyholidayrent.com/index.php?page=structuredetails&structid=144, a small elegant building within walking distance of the magnificent Ponte Vecchio.

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“Future in the Past” . Trussardi celebrates 100 years in Florence

The  vaulted  space of the Florentine “Stazione Leopolda” is going to host the main event “Pitti Uomo”, commemorating this year the centennial of Trussardi, an Italian luxury brand which started off as a humble glove maker at the beginning of the 20th century. Its creative director, Milan Vukmirovic, has devoted the brand his whole leather collection ranging from the chamois V-neck shirts to the soft suede trenches.

The right homage to the Trussardi brand includes an exhibition called  8 ½ ( 13th January -6th February) on the foosteps of Fellini’s famous film, hinting at the years of  patronage of  contemporary art from the Trussardi Foundation. Thirteen artists are here showing their works: Darren Almond, Pawel Althamer, John Bock, Martin Creed, Tacit Dean, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Urs Fischer, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Paul McCarthy, Paola Pivi, Anri Salameanin. The introduction to the exhibition is the installation at the entrance of the site. The encouraging neon writing by Martin Creed “Everything is going to be alright” sounds like  an ironically enthusiastic welcome to the visitor. Inside he will be surprised by curious or controversial works such as a white car with its caravan sprouting from the floor  or the gigantic twenty metre balloon floating in the air,  the larger- than -life portrait of the artist Pawel Althamer. A privileged position is represented by Maurizio Cattelan’s work, a double  self-portrait, reproducing  two corpses with eyes wide shut, titled “We” .  It is on show in Italy for the first time . “A detached reflection on the  meaning of death and the frailty of life” somebody says.

The cooperation between the artist from Padua and the brand is not new, it dates back to May  2004  when three life-sized puppets, barefoot and open-eyed hung from an oak in piazza XXIV Maggio, a historical spot in Milan, shocking the unaware passers-by or drivers, who thought they were real. Strongly linked to the double self portrait by Cattelan, the two films  “Still Life” and “Day for night”, directed by Tacita Dean  where she turns  the studio of the painter Morandi  into a cinematic fresco. The epilogue must not be missed , a  mise-en-scène, simultaneously playful and dramatic typical of the Theatre of the Absurd, represented by the mysterious crowds by Paola Pivi. They are even more enigmatic than Pinter’s characters because even  Pinter’s  unreal plot is missing.  Martin Creed’s  promising words have failed our expectations.

Better for the guests to hurry   along to the special  anniversary menu of haute cuisine, to the journey of the senses,  prepared by the brand’s restaurant chef, Andrea Berton from the “Ristorante Trussardi Alla Scala” relocated to Florence for the occasion.

For accommodation we recommend our web site http://www.tuscanyholidayrent.com.

The choice is wide, it ranges from various flats in Florence to charming or luxury accommodations in the Tuscan countryside.

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Domenico Ghirlandaio and his school between Florence and the beloved surrounding hills

The Ghirlandaio, a dynasty of artists  dominating for nearly a century  the Florentine Renaissance, are the focus of a major exhibition from November 2010 up to May the first 2011.

Florence and its outskirts have become what is generally referred to as “museo diffuso”,  that is a well- defined area  rich in artworks, ideally corresponding to the spots where the artists operated. Thus Art is  overflowing  the borders of the  definite structure represented by the museum  to involve the  geographical background where the artists actually lived and worked.

A  sort of  homage focused more on painters  than on the collecting site.

The Ghirlandaios, an extraordinarily skilled family, modernly structured according to different  roles, included Domenico, his two brothers David and Benedetto, their brother-in-law Sebastiano Mainardi and his son Ridolfo, alongside with dozens of artists among whom Michelangelo Buonarroti .

Their activity spans from 1470 up to the death of Ridolfo in 1561.

An artistic saga featuring a family who witnessed  the unstable fortunes of the Medici from the age of Lorenzo the Magnificent,  the following period of Savonarola through  the short and fragile republic up to1532 when they again succeeded in establishing their power in Florence.

The serene paintings of Domenico aimed at pictorially representing his own times. The religious issue, notwithstanding its  symbolical  meanings, is deeply grounded in reality.  In “The Visitation” part of the Histories of the Virgin in Santa Maria Novella, he paints a gathering of Florentine ladies of his own time walking up a road. The Arno riverside and Florence are quite recognizable. With Ridolfo and followers painting still mirrors the historical events but has lost its serenity, it is getting more and more complex , emotionally perceiving the instability of the Medici’s fortunes. The “Entry of Charles VIII into Florence” by Francesco Granacci vibrantly represents  the expulsion of Piero the Unfortunate, Lorenzo’s son, from Florence, but the portrait of the young Cosimo I by Ridolfo foreshadows the new and more stable  re-establishing of the Medici in Florence.

Today the paintings of the Ghirlandaio family are well exhibited in the “ Castello dell’Acciaiolo “ in  Scandicci . From  its  windows  the  view on the surrounding countryside echoes  the backdrop of the paintings, as  a contemporary connection  to the spots where Domenico bought a house, later inhabited and decorated by his son Ridolfo. It rings out as a homage to this cherished area, an invitation  to explore  the surrounding museums, churches.

These extraordinary places surely deserve a visit.

The tour starts at Scandicci, hometown of Domenico Ghirlandaio, more exactly from the Acciaiolo Castle to which many works have actually been lent by various Florentine museums.

Hence  the visitor will follow a double track in search of  large and small paintings in museums, palaces, churches, villas and abbeys.
The first in Florence will include

 -the frescoes in the Sala dei Gigli in the Palazzo Vecchio,

– the Sassetti Chapel in Santa Trinita,

– the Tornabuoni Chapel in Santa Maria Novella

– the Adoration of the Magi at the Museo degli Innocenti.

The other will lead to the discovery of the masterpieces by the Ghirlandaio family  in the north-west of Florence, that is Scandicci, where  their masterpieces can be admired in

– Badia San Salvatore e San Lorenzo

-Chiesa di san Colombano

-Chiesa di san Bartolo in Tuto

-Chiesa di San Martino alla Palma

At Campi Bisenzio and Lastra a Signa the  Museums of Sacred Art of  San Donnino and San Martino are worth a silent contemplation.

A charming trip into the Renaissance.

For accommodation we recommend our web site http://www.tuscanyholidayrent.com.

The choice is wide, it ranges from various flats in Florence to charming or luxury accommodations in the Tuscan countryside, particularly impressive in this season.

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Keith Haring celebration in Pisa

Pisa is celebrating Keith Haring, the American  artist who painted in 1989 an outsized graffiti called ”Tuttomondo” on the wall of Saint Antony’s convent . The thirty multicoloured figures, joyfully dancing, compose a sort of modern “fresco”, celebrating universal peace in a composition of 180 sqms . It was Haring’s last public work before dying from Aids in 1990 in New York. In his Diaries the artist himself remembers this experience as one of his best projects.  Pisa, grateful to Keith Haring, one of the greatest exponents of “Art Street” with Michael Basquiat,  celebrates the 20th anniversary of his death with a  special event .Up to December the 24th children, passersby, tourists, ordinary people will be invited to ideally continue  the game of Haring,  jointly working on a gigantic  jigsaw of 32,256 pieces called “Keith Haring-double retro”. It is the largest jigsaw in the world  devoted to his works. For an accommodation in Pisa we suggest our beautiful apartment in the historical centre  http://www.tuscanyholidayrent.com/Apartments/Pisa/Art%20Cities_Pisa_City_details_S72.html

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“Jan Mirò.I miti del Mediterraneo”

The town of the Leaning Tower and the Piazza dei Miracoli is now again present on the international cultural scene with a gorgeous exhibition about one of the greatest master of the 20th century Jan Mirò . In the historical residence “ Blu Palazzo d’Arte e Cultura”, in the heart of Pisa along the Arno riversides, 110 works including paintings, sculptures, lithographs and drawings will be displayed in the exhibition “Jan Mirò.I Miti del Mediterraneo” up to January the 23rd. .The curator, Claudia Beltramo Ceppi, has paved a new way far from the consummeristic stereotypes of contemporary exhibitions. She deeply relies on emotions,”It is an exhibition to feel more than to look at” she says. The visitor is, therefore, invited to feel Mirò’s long production, from the years in Paris and the bumping into Surrealism to the return to Spain with Picasso to take part to the Civil War. Mirò is going to be deeply marked by the understanding of the tragedy and of its only way out into poetry. An escape which will become salvation. The visitor is going to follow a double journey from the illustrations of three books on Breton and Eluard, to the “room of the myths”, with some works devoted to the Minotaur, (1938) and to Daphne and Chloe, concerning the representation of force and violence of man. The myth is the mare nostrum, it is the research of the Catalan artist’s identity when he paints the earth, the nature crowded by people, insects, flowers, trees, birds, figures that fly across the vivid colors of his works. Here the sign becomes a line, an essential graphism plunged into a cosmic void. From 1935 his painting changes, it abandons the realistic model, Mirò looks at the drop of water, at the small objects found on the beach. The new turn is documented in the 22 lithographs illustrating “ Les Costellations Breton”, in the Archipel Sauvage of 1970, in “ L’espoir du Navigateur” up to the discovery of the Japanese haiku poetry, a symbol of a new more essential point of view. The artist in order to express the complexity of reality feels the urge, vital for him, to go beyond the limits of his art and through the power of poetry and myth, his two guidelines, he will go beyond painting. According to him poetry creates tension able to open space and heighten his powers as an artist, resulting in his unique style, made up of organic, flattened forms drawn with a sharp line.” My paintings- the artist himself says- are always born in a state of hallucination, provoked by some shocks or another, objective or subjective, for which I am entirely irresponsible”.
Myth is a form of conceptualization and of circular or recurring narrative structure that helps to understand the real world . According to Miro’s own words “This sort of human presence in things that is what mythology is for me. It is what makes me not consider a stone, a rock, dead things. Essentially what I paint is above all this mythology.”
The myth is also the tool to claim his Catalan identity. In front of the tragedy of civil war and a new and increasingly authoritarian government, the artists from Catalonia share the need to claim an identity that, until then, the cultural milieu employed as a narrative means. Miró found this identity in the landscape, in the light, the mountains and cultivated fields . Thence the intensely atavic identification of Mirò with nature and the landscape of the Mediterranean . The artist’s favorite subjects a sort of fil rouge throughout his long artistic production, are insects, snails and snakes, and of course women, the very symbol of Mother Nature.
Such a highly dramatic exhibition deserves a visit.
For accommodations in the heart of Pisa, we recommend our site www.tuscanyholidayrent.com which offers a flat on the ground floor of a former 17th century monastery, full of charme for its terracotta tile flooring and beautiful ceilings, at a walking distance from Palazzo Blu and from Piazza dei Miracoli. You could, as well, choose an accommodation in the countryside which is particularly impressive in this season.

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