A museum dedicated to Giampaolo Talani will be opened in San Vincenzo

Talani was born in 1955 in San Vincenzo, in the province of Livorno. His works are exhibited all over the world, from Berlin to the Quirinale for which, at the conclusion of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, a bronze bust of Garibaldi was commissioned. “The Sailor” (2010), a seven-metre sculpture, dominates the new tourist port of San Vincenzo, an eighteen-metre replica was commissioned for the port of Miami; “The Man Who Saves the Sea”, a tribute to the rescuers and victims of the Costa Concordia shipwreck, is located on the Isola del Giglio; the bronze “La Rosa dei Venti” is located at the Venice Santa Lucia station (2014); the “Abfahrt-Departure” statue created for Washingtonplatz in Berlin (2015), in front of the new Berlin Hauptbahnhof railway station; the “Fiorenza” statue is located in Piazza San Jacopino in Florence (2016). Also in Florence there is the “Departures” fresco at the Florence Santa Maria Novella station.

“My father would not have liked the word museum – said Martino Talani -, we could call it ‘Spazio Giampaolo Talani’. It will be a place where his art will be even more alive and which will help compose a mosaic of which even the editorial goals are part and which will convey to us the extreme interest but also the great affection that my father was able to generate and which still spreads today”.

The Tower of San Vincenzo, from the medieval era, is today used as the City Council Hall and as a venue for temporary exhibitions. The idea is to reserve some rooms to permanently display the artist’s paintings and sculptures, a way to pay homage to one of the town’s most illustrious sons who from there became an internationally renowned painter and sculptor.

“Giorgio Vasari maintained that you don’t need the desire to be on par with others to emerge – underlined Nencini – and Talani took this step forward, as a man of the sea interested more in the crossing than in arriving in port. One of my favorite works of his is the ‘Departures’ fresco at the Santa Maria Novella station, with the men with their ties in the wind, where the desire to travel and adventure is more than that of reaching the destination”.

The catalogue, the result of meticulous research and archiving work, represents a fundamental piece for understanding the creative path of one of the most influential figures on the contemporary artistic scene. The volume is not only a tool for collectors and academics, but an act of homage to a man who profoundly marked the history of art in our region and beyond. The publication, published by Pacini Editore, was edited by the Talani Archive with the support of the non-profit cultural association Giampaolo Talani. “This second volume closes a circle that began ten years ago – declared Giammarco Puntelli -. Presenting it today, eight years after his death, means not only cataloging works, but keeping alive the voice of an artist who still has a lot to say in the present”. (by Paolo Martini)