Opera magazine

On Friday 21 June 2024, at 3.00 pm, the photography exhibition “LUCIA BALDINI. The gaze of the wayfarer” in the presence of Antonio Natali, councilor of the Opera, Lucia Baldini and the two curators of the exhibition, Vincenzo Circosta and Giuseppe Giari. Lucia Baldini began her artistic career in the 1980s collaborating with festivals and theater and dance companies, in particular with Carla Fracci for over twelve years. Subsequently he becomes passionate about and documents the world of tango. With Carlo Mazzacurati she began working as a still photographer in cinema. For years he has been carrying out a project linked to the dream. In this new project, the photographer compares herself with the monuments of the Cathedral of Florence, offering us a dreamlike and poetic vision. On display is a selection of thirteen images, in black and white, part of a larger work. “Lucia Baldini's images, - Antonio Natali explains - while true to life, take on metaphysical guises. They result as visions of a world we would like, but which seems lost. As in a dream, women and men stand or walk singly within the ancient and noble architecture composing the grand heritage of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore. [...] These are figures who move within the inventions of great creators, or pause at the centre of floors decorated with refined abstractions. In their secluded journeys, they rediscover the specificities of their souls, along with freedom of thought, finally released from the conditioning that flattens and renders uniform. There, a stone's throw away, others who have supinely submitted to the market's admonitions crowd in, without even seeing, entrusting to external electronic memories what the heart itself once knew how to preserve. [...] Only those who, in the hubbub of a chaotic and senseless traffic, are able to listen to the voice of their own personal chords, will sense the underlying poetry of those works". "Florence, with the Cathedral and its monuments, - explains Vincenzo Circosta - essential destination for wayfarers of the past, and now victim of today's mass tourism: in this difficult-to-use context, through her photographs, Lucia Baldini manages to perform an extraordinary work of abstraction. Through the lens, amidst a pressured jumble of people, the individual isolates themselves from the mass, emerging as a true person. What develops is a transitory solitude that brings the person into conversation with the monuments. Suspended in this sort of non-solitude, they again become person and not crowd, free to read and interpret the works of art before them in ways that are intimate and personal". In the heart of bustling Florence, - declares Giuseppe Giari- the "Libreria Brunelleschi" exhibition space extends a very considerate invitation to slow down, pause for a moment, and discover an area dedicated to vision, reflection and art. Now at its third event, in this bespoke environment developed by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore especially for small thematic exhibitions, the large wall offers itself to those who would care to devote attention. In full harmony with this vocation, reflecting the spirit of the place to perfection, we exhibit the works of Lucia Baldini, conceived for these spaces and born of a fruitful collaboration. Surrender to Sublime "Nature, like art, invites us to pursue the search for mystery, the transcendent, and to traverse the ecstasy that conflicts with rationality, to find emotional awareness. The sublime, through the relations of intellect with imagination, reveals the conflict between sensibility and reason, allowing the rational to gain self-awareness". Lucia Baldini www.luciabaldini.it

Opera magazine

temporary exhibition

Lucia Baldini. The gaze of the wayfarer

Maternità e morte. La Pietà di Venturino Venturi a cent'anni dalla nascita