Gianni Cacciarini

Despite this first debut in painting, the artistic technique he became passionate about and deepened most throughout the seventies was engraving. In 1973 he created the portfolio of six engravings The Vines presented at the gallery of the antique dealer Giovanni Conti. The 1976 collection published by Il Torchio di Milano, The Factories, consists of 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 in which man can no longer identify with his own work.
In these years alongside his activity as an engraver, Gianni Cacciarini began a careful study of painting techniques under the affectionate guidance of Pietro Annigoni who was introduced to him by the poet Roberto Coppini and who would be his mentor and inspirer for all the years to come.
In 1978 he held his first solo exhibition at the Gonnelli Antiquarian Bookshop where he exhibited, in addition to The Vines and The Factories, also the 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 artworks which are still exhibited today at the National Gallery in Washington. The American experience was decisive in the formation of Gianni Cacciarini who also embraced influences from pop art, visible later in his paintings.
In 1980 he held his first painting exhibition at the Vallardi Gallery in La Spezia. This was a kind of dress rehearsal for the exhibition at the L'Indiano Gallery of Paolo Marini in Florence which the artist felt as a verification of the work done over all these years. In the early eighties he exhibited at the Royal College of Spain in Bologna, at the Il segno contemporaneo Gallery in Brescia and at the Pananti Gallery in Florence. Among the paintings of this period appears, as if fused among the still lifes, the figure. This was a new experience never attempted by 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 fresco cycles.
In the nineties exhibitions continued that brought his artworks 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 was perceived as a sort of cutting of the umbilical cord which however bore fruit in him as he was no longer forced to keep Annigoni's torch burning.
From this moment, in fact, Gianni Cacciarini began to approach the portrait with much more enthusiasm, feeling freer to try other registers. Thus were born many portraits of women and men that have as a background an imaginary cinematic space that increasingly takes up space in the artist's artworks and which led to the exhibition of his paintings at the Cinematographies show in 1999.
The new millennium opened for the painter with continuous and ever greater attention to portraiture, this time also full figure. These new studies inspired his paintings on cardboard that highlight details of the body's anatomy and facial features. These latter details were investigated by the artist paying much attention to the introspective aspect, more than to 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 in this period Gianni Cacciarini intensified his passion for the world of cinema, enriching his already well-stocked archive.
Although in these years he devoted himself more to a withdrawn life, there were no lack of opportunities for exhibition events that saw him as the protagonist. Among the most noteworthy appointments are the solo exhibition in Falconara Marittima, the group exhibition The modern manner of Rosso Fiorentino in Florence and a retrospective mostly of still lifes at the Napoleonic Fort in Ancona. This last 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 artworks conceived in the rooms of Palazzo Visacci in Florence.