Special project sponsored by the Tuscany region and the city of Prato curated by Stefano Pezzato with the co-operation of Francesca Mariotti
for the transfer of the Mariotti Archive to the museum





Project Space Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art, Prato
9th October 2011 - 30th April 2012



From 9th October to 30th April 2012 the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato presents the first Mario Mariotti exhibition in a museum.
The project, curated by Stefano Pezzato, was developed by collecting materials from the archive which had been reorganised by Francesca Mariotti, the artist's daughter. It includes numerous works, objects, documents and original pictures, publications and reviews, findings and exhaustive memoirs of intensive, eclectic activity, mainly carried out in Florence.
After Mariotti's heirs sold his “workshop” in via Toscanella, Santo Spirito, the archive was moved to Prato at the end of 2010, confirming the Pecci Centre's role as Tuscan regional museum for contemporary art. The retrospective and the monograph which goes with it, both made by the Pecci Centre, are the recognition of one of the most vibrant, extraordinary, overt and unconventional artistic personalities to be found in Tuscany in recent decades .
The exhibition of a substantial selection of works and archive materials in a space which is usually devoted to artists' projects indicates the desire to state that, in the spirit of his brilliant ideational and creative research and in his daughter Francesca's constant recovery and reconstruction, Mariotti's work lives on. In addition to being exhibited, Mariotti's entire artistic career will be documented in an extensive monograph published by the Luigi Pecci Centre, with texts by the curator, original projects and works by the artist and a wide critical and iconographic repertoire.


Artist's biography

Mario Mariotti

He was born in Montespertoli (Florence) in 1936 and died in Florence in 1997 at the age of sixty. Forty years of his life were spent inventing images and proposing productions which were aimed at pushing the boundaries of artistic practice and reinterpreting and updating the cultural roots of the city of Florence.
He was a magmatic author, a keen investigator of visual languages (starting with drawing, his real passion and genuine Florentine artistic matrix, going on to set design and graphics, advertising and publishing, photographic projection, painting, sculpture, installation, public action and extemporaneous speech) and was the tireless driving force behind Santo Spirito, an entire area of Florence.
His spectacular “feats” in urban spaces, in the public sphere or in daily life are unforgettable, designed and organised single-handedly and then shared collectively: projecting NO in block capitals on the dome of Florence cathedral to mark the referendum on divorce (May 1974); hanging out contemporary artists' “clothes” (“Panni”) at the windows of Santo Spirito on the allegorical theme of fire (Florence, 21st September 1985); the allegorical representation in the form of ballet of Lorenzo the Magnificent's last day alive (Giuliano. A Florentine death, June 1992) which was repeated at the Joyce Theatre in New York in October 1992 and as part of “Factory Europe” ("Fabbrica Europa") in Florence in October 1994.

Mariotti is widely considered to be “the hand painter”, and his hands have gone around the word via photos, books, adverts and videos which have won him numerous national and international awards.
The Prato museum's rediscovery of Mario Mariotti's works will be supported by a series of educational services, slides information and documentation. At the weekends the museum will run special educational workshops, designed by Mariotti himself and now co-ordinated by his daughter Francesca. They are open to everybody but especially to all those who want to try to get involved and turn their own hands into amazing imagination tools with just simple, easily washable water colours. There will also be guided tours of the exhibition at the weekends. Historical publications and special editions by the artist will be available to buy at the bookshop and a new map “on the trail of Mario Mariotti in Florence” will be handed out, connected to a special service for guided tours with advance bookings in Florence. As part of the next edition of "Lo schermo dell'arte. Film Festival" (“The screen of art”), which will be held from 21st to 24th November 2011 at the Odeon Cinema in Florence by Silvia Lucchesi, there will also be a special “homage to Mario Mariotti" video.

Mario Mariotti (9th October 2011 – 30th April 2012)
curated by Stefano Pezzato, in collaboration with Francesca Mariotti
Spazio Progetti
Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art, Prato
Viale della Repubblica, 277 - Prato
Free entry
Times: every day 10 am – 7pm. Closed Tuesdays, 24, 25 and 31 December 2011.
Open on 1st January 2012 from 3.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m. with free admission.
Open on 6st January 2012 from 10.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m.