Gianni Cacciarini biography

Gianni Cacciarini is an Italian engraver, painter, and architect. He was born in Florence in 1941. He enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Florence and at the same time began his artistic training at the studio of Vairo Mongatti, a student of Morandi. During these years, he painted large panels with enlarged details from the scenes of Paolo Uccello's Battles and with one of these works, he won a scholarship for young artists from the Municipality of Florence in 1972.
Despite this initial debut in painting, the artistic technique he became passionate about and explored most deeply throughout the 1970s is engraving. In 1973, he created the portfolio of six engravings Le viti presented at the gallery of the antique dealer Giovanni Conti. In 1976, the collection published by Il Torchio di Milano, Le fabbriche, features structures that Gianni Cacciarini contemplates, feeling inspired by their appearance as old disused tools, by that sense of something abandoned, by the subtle balance of presence-absence, in a time of mass production where man can no longer identify with his work.
In these years, alongside his work as an engraver, Gianni Cacciarini begins a careful study of painting techniques under the affectionate guidance of Pietro Annigoni, who was introduced to him by the poet Roberto Coppini and would be his mentor and inspiration for all the years to come.
In 1978, he held his first solo exhibition at the Libreria Antiquaria Gonnelli where, in addition to the Viti and Fabbriche, he also exhibited his first still lifes and urban views. In the same year, he participated in the group exhibition New Talent in Printmaking by the Associated American Artists, where the collector John Rosenwald fell in love with and purchased many of his works, which are still on display today at the National Gallery in Washington. The American experience would be crucial in the formation of Gianni Cacciarini, who would also embrace influences from pop art, later visible in his paintings.
In 1980, he held his first painting exhibition at the Galleria Vallardi in La Spezia. It was a sort of dress rehearsal for the exhibition at the Galleria L'Indiano di Paolo Marini in Florence, which the artist would see as a validation of his work over all these years. In the early eighties, he exhibited at the Collegio Reale di Spagna in Bologna, the Galleria Il segno contemporaneo in Brescia, and the Galleria Pananti in Florence. Among the paintings of this period, the figure appears, as if merged with the still lifes. This was a new and never-before-attempted experience for the artist, due to the fact that during the period when Cacciarini studied with Annigoni, the latter no longer painted from a model, but only from memory for the fresco cycles.
In the 1990s, the exhibitions continued, bringing his works to various Italian galleries.
This is also the period that coincides with the separation from Annigoni's studio, where the artist had continued to paint even after the master's death. This event is perceived as a sort of cutting of the umbilical cord, which, however, bears fruit in him as he is no longer forced to keep Annigoni's torch burning.
From this moment on, in fact, Gianni Cacciarini begins to approach the portrait with much more enthusiasm, feeling freer to experiment with other styles. Thus, numerous portraits of women and men are created, with a cinematic imaginary as the backdrop that increasingly occupies space in the artist's works and will lead to the exhibition of his paintings at the Cinematografie show in 1999.
The new millennium opens for the painter with a continuous and ever-increasing focus on portraiture, this time also in full figure. These new studies have inspired his paintings on cardboard that highlight details of body anatomy and facial features. The latter details have been explored by the artist with much attention to the introspective aspect, rather than the form.
His portraits are almost always faces of friends. Famous is the one made for the well-known singer Patti Pravo, which shows how during this period Gianni Cacciarini intensified his passion for the world of cinema, enriching his already well-stocked archive.
Despite having dedicated himself more to a reclusive life in recent years, there have been no shortage of exhibition events where he has been a protagonist. Among the most noteworthy appointments are the solo exhibition in Falconara Marittima, the group exhibition La maniera moderna del Rosso Fiorentino in Florence, and an anthology mostly of still lifes at the Fortino Napoleonico in Ancona. This latter artwork confirms that his passion and love for engravings have never ceased.
Gianni Cacciarini continues to stay in sunny Lattaia where he creates most of his works, which are conceived in the rooms of Palazzo Visacci in Florence.