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Chiari Giuseppe

Chiari Giuseppe

((Italy) 1926–2007)

In evidence
  • Group show at 2 major institutions:
    Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and New Museum
  • Included in a major biennial
    Venice Biennale International Exhibition
  • Collected by 2 major institutions
    Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and Whitney Museum of American Art

Giuseppe Chiari was born in Florence, Italy on September 26, 1926. In Florence he devoted himself to studying piano and music composition in parallel with studies in mathematics and engineering (1946–51).[2]

He is an exponent and main promoter of the group of Florentine artists, operating from the end of the Second World War to today including Sylvano Bussotti, Daniele Lombardi, Giancarlo Cardini, Albert Mayr, Pietro Grossi, Marcello Aitiani e Sergio Maltagliati. These musicians have experimented the interaction among sound, sign and vision, a synaesthetics of art derived from historical avant-gardes, from Kandinskij to futurism, to Scrjabin and Schoenberg, all the way to Bauhaus.[3]

He was especially drawn to the work of John Cage, and himself began to take an interest in promoting experimental research in visual music in 1961. In 1962, at the Fluxus Festspiele internationale Neuester Musik in Wiesbaden, he joined the Fluxus group, taking on the role of artist-composer-philosopher. Among his writings are: Music without counterpoint (1969), Untitled (1971), Mother Music (1973); Teatrino (1974) Art (1974), Method for playing (1976); Aesthetik (1984), Doubt harmony (1990) and Music (1994).

Chiari made what he called "action music" based on a complex method of execution and traditional instruments: music that takes as its essential element random sounds (water, dry leaves, stones). His work “Giuocare con l'acqua e dire la parola acqua” (“Playing with water and saying the word water”) is quite remarkable for both the transformation of the pages of the script into an aesthetic object, and the clarity and rigour of the texts that preludes to the later production of statements typical of conceptual art. His Work Fogli pentagrammati, 1975, is in Museo cantonale d'arte of Lugano.[4]

Chiari experimented with different visual mediums: from painting-collages, sheet music, and photographs. His graphic and pictorial work is partially preserved at the International Centre of Contemporary Art Tornabuoni in Florence.

(An Extract from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Chiari)

  • Fluxus

    Fluxus, anni '90

    cm 120x60x18, Sculpture Volume (Mixed Media, Collage/Guitar) in plexiglass

  • Chitarra

    Chitarra, anni '90

    cm 120x60x18, Sculpture Volume (Mixed Media, Collage/Guitar) in plexiglass