Roberto Barni biography

Roberto Barni is a Tuscan painter and sculptor considered one of the exponents of the Pittura colta movement, theorized by the critic Italo Mussa in the 1980s. He was born in Pistoia in 1939. In 1959, he began painting his first abstract paintings, using wood, iron, and newspaper.
His first exhibitions date back to 1960, mostly linked to a Pop-style figuration within the so-called Scuola di Pistoia.
In 1962, he exhibited his Necrologio. In Rome, he met Cesare Vivaldi, who invited him to participate in the exhibition Revort I - Documenti d'arte Oggettiva in Europa, in Palermo in 1965. During this period, Roberto Barni became interested in a type of minimalist-conceptual experience, which he later moved beyond when, with a symbolic artwork, Resurrezione of 1972 (10 years after exhibiting his necrologio), he returned to history and painting. From 1966 to 1973, he exhibited at the Zoom Studio in Pistoia, at Flori in Florence, at the Selected Artist Galleries in New York, at Van de Loo in Munich, and at Charles Lienhrd in Basel.
In 1976, he uses the term anachronism for the first time, asserting that the artist must have a vision of art that escapes the concept of time: it is not conditioned by it or by the techniques and materials of contemporaneity. Some critics like Italo Mussa, Maurizio Calvesi, and Marisa Vescovo begin to promote this artistic vision, but Roberto Barni does not want to be associated with a particular movement, preferring personal exploration.
From 1980 to 1983, Roberto Barni executed the iconographic cycle Paternity. During the same period, he painted a series of canvases from the series The Adventures of Domestic Thought, in which the man with blindfolded eyes appears for the first time, a fundamental element of human conflict and a key character in Barni's poetic journey.
In these years, the exhibition activity and the fame of the Pistoian artist increase significantly, leading him to exhibit not only in Italy but also in major European cities and in America.
In the early eighties, he exhibited at the Festival dei due Mondi in Spoleto, in Florence, in Milan at the Galleria d'Arte dell'Ariete, in Paris, and in 1985 in New York at the Queens Museum and the Shape Gallery. From this moment on, Barni's contacts with the United States would never cease: the artist participated in major international exhibitions such as A new Romanticism in Washington D.C. and Ohio, Avant-garde in the Eighties at the County Museum in Los Angeles. In Europe, he participated in the Venice Biennale as a sculptor in 1988, and in the Monte Carlo Sculpture Biennale. During this period, Roberto Barni began to devote himself more and more to sculpture and created the works: Atto muto, Filastrocca, Vacina, Opposte Vedute.
In 1997, he exhibits at Palazzo Fabbroni and the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, in 1999 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Reims.
The collective Fermentazioni with Antonino Bove, Giuseppe Chiari, Omar Galliani, and Marco Nereo Rotelli at the Palazzo Ducale di Lucca dates back to 2000.
From 1999 to 2000, he created several sculptures, including Continuo for the Daniel Spoerri collection in Seggiano and La grande Vacina for the Museo Pecci di Prato.
In 2001, he collaborated with Alessandro Bagnai and Alessandro Poggiali, presenting works in Florence and Siena. In 2002, he participated in group exhibitions such as Something Happened at the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava, The Modernity of Melancholy at the Palazzo della Ragione in Verona.
Currently, Roberto Barni lives and works in Florence, continuing to exhibit in Italy and the rest of the world.