Home Shows Metropolis - Cionini solo show


Metropolis is the title chosen for Claudio Cionini's next exhibition scheduled from Thursday 30 June - with the opening at 6.30 p.m. - at the Galleria d'arte la Fonderia, on the street of the same name in Florence. Cionini will present unpublished works, most of them painted expressly for this exhibition.

It was Niccolò Mannini who wanted the Maremma artist to return to exhibit in his gallery. From the very beginning, he has believed in the quality and uniqueness of his works, contributing to the success of this painter who is now known well beyond national borders. From his beginnings, when he painted the blast furnaces of his native Piombino, and from Rust! Factory, City, Memory, the 2011 solo exhibition at the Piaggio Museum in Pontedera, a lot of time has passed, and Metropolis represents a new chapter in Cionini's introspective journey into the dynamic, modern world of big cities.

The theme of the exhibition, in fact, is one dear to the artist: big cities. Cionini, who paints in acrylics using a palette knife and almost scratching the canvas, presents them to us like a book with its pages lifted, and open, on a story that seems endless. And perhaps for this very reason, because the tale does not end, his cities do not possess a defined horizon, but the 'narrative' converges towards an indefinite point, seen from an elevated position, towards which the ideal lines of the composition converge. The space is dilated, the colours are ochre, grey, sky blue and red, and the human presence is at most hinted at, although it can be felt: driving cars along the Avenues in the 'Big Apple' or the Parisian Boulevards, behind the facades of office buildings and bistro windows, in the bowels of cities where the underground flows. Without a clearly defined human presence, the viewer is induced to focus on the details of the city and thus capture the personality and energy of each one.

At La Fonderia, as Niccolò Mannini anticipates, we will travel to Paris, New York, London, and at least two other big cities that we will learn about on the day of the opening.