Claudio Cargiolli
Nella trama segreta della fantasia - Florence Art Gallery 1-15 December 2018
FLORENCE ART GALLERY presents a solo show of the Italian artist Claudio Cargiolli, titled “Nella trama segrata della fantasia”. On display for two weeks a selection of about thirty-five works. Claudio Cargiolli will be present at the opening.
In the exhibition’s catalogue the great poet and writer Guido Oldani writes about Claudio Cargiolli: “It is refined painting that steps outside art galleries, a book without a bookshelf, a classical neologism evaporated from a dictionary. Cargiolli’s world is only his, and we will gain our viewpoint only after a fiery purification of taste. A superficial glance would consider his art as surrealist, but it is much freer, more educated and arcane”.
About the artist
CLAUDIO CARGIOLLI was born in 1952 in Ponzanello, a hamlet near Fosdinovo (Massa Carrara). He attended the Fine Arts Secondary School, and later the Fine Arts Academy in Carrara, the town where he lives and works. Since his early works, he was curious, free, and privileged imagination and fantasy, avoiding any concession to the fashion of the time. He has always been wisely rigorous in searching pure painting, in experimenting ancient techniques and the pictorial artifices that were more congenial to him. From 1960 on, very young, he took part in several painting exhibitions. His first personal exhibit took place in 1971, at the Fillungo gallery in Lucca, curated by the art critic and historian Pier Carlo Santini, who would follow him for many years in his artistic research. On the strength of this early experience, he continued his studies and obtained his diploma at the Academy in 1974. From 1983 on, Cargiolli was able to give an order to his vision and a shape to his dreams. His painting started reinforcing itself just as volumes, shapes and objects found their places on the canvas in an imaginary tale. The almost illogical merging of scenes, visions and descriptions contributed to building a metaphysic reality permeating a surreal but comforting poetry, despite its unlikelihood. The process of research and work increased and became stronger from the second half of the 1980’s when he started his collaboration with the Forni gallery in Bologna and the series of prestigious exhibitions in Italy and abroad. To name a few among the numerous solo exhibits and collective art exhibitions, the retrospective exhibits at Palazzo Ducale in Massa, Palazzo Ducale in Urbino and Palazzo Ducale in Genova.
