Gianni Cacciarini biography

Gianni Cacciarini is an Italian engraver, painter and architect. 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, student of Morandi. In these years he painted large panels with enlarged details from the scenes of the Battles of Paolo Uccello and with one of these works he won, in 1972, a scholarship for young artists from the Municipality of Florence.
Despite this first debut in painting, the artistic technique that he became passionate about and which he explored the most throughout the Seventies was engraving. In 1973 he created the folder of six engravings The screws presented at the gallery of the antiquarian Giovanni Conti. From 1976, however, is the collection published by Il Torchio di Milano, The factories, structures that Gianni Cacciarini contemplates feeling influenced by their appearance as old disused tools, from that sense of an abandoned thing, from the subtle balance of presence-absence, in a time of mass production in which man can no longer identify with his work.
In these years, alongside his activity as an engraver, Gianni Cacciarini began a careful study of pictorial techniques under the affectionate guidance of Pietro Annigoni who was introduced to him by the poet Roberto Coppini and will 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 he exhibited not only the Screws and the Fabbriche but also his first still lifes and urban views. In the same year he participated in the collective exhibition New talent in Printmaking, of the Associated American Artists where the collector John Rosenwald fell in love and purchased many of his works which, still today , are exhibited at the National Gallery in Washington. The American experience will be decisive in the formation of Gianni Cacciarini who will also welcome 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 is a sort of dress rehearsal for the exhibition at Paolo Marini's Galleria L'Indiano in Florence which the artist will feel as a verification of his work over all these years. In the early 1980s he exhibited at the Collegio Reale di Spagna in Bologna, at the Galleria Il Segno Contemporaneous in Brescia and at the Galleria Pananti in Florence. Among the paintings of this period, the figure appears, as if merged with still lifes. This is a new experience never attempted by the artist due to the fact that in the period in which Cacciarini studied with Annigoni, the latter no longer painted from a model, but only from memory for the fresco cycles.
In the nineties the exhibitions continued which brought his works to various Italian galleries.
This is also the period that coincides with the separation from Annigoni's studio, where the artist 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 for him as he is no longer forced to keep Annigoni's torch lit.
From this moment, in fact, Gianni Cacciarini begins to tackle the portrait with much more enthusiasm, feeling more free to try his hand at other registers. Thus, many portraits of women and men are born which have as their space behind a cinematographic imagery which takes up more and more space in the artist's works and which will lead to the exhibition of his paintings at the Cinematografie exhibition in 1999.
The new millennium opens for the painter with continuous and ever-increasing attention to portraiture, this time also full-figure. These new studies inspired his paintings on cardboard which highlight details of the anatomy of the body and the features of the faces. These last details were investigated by the artist, paying close attention to the introspective aspect, rather than to the form.
His portraits are almost always faces of friends. Famous is the one created for the well-known singer Patti Pravo which demonstrates how in this period Gianni Cacciarini intensified his passion for the world of cinema, enriching his already well-stocked archive.
Despite the fact that in recent years he has dedicated himself more to a retired life, there has been no shortage of opportunities for exhibition events in which he has been the protagonist. Among the most noteworthy events are the solo show in Falconara Marittima, the group show The modern way of Rosso Fiorentino in Florence and an anthology mostly of still lifes at the Fortino Napoleonico in Ancona. This latest work confirms how his passion and love for engravings has never ceased.
Gianni Cacciarini continues to stay in the sunny Lattaia where he creates most of his works which are conceived in the rooms of Palazzo Visacci in Florence.