Roberto Barni biography

Roberto Barni is a Tuscan painter and sculptor counted among the exponents of the Learned Painting movement, theorized by the critic Italo Mussa in the Eighties. He was born in Pistoia in 1939. In 1959 he began painting his first abstract paintings, using wood, iron, newspaper.
His first exhibitions date back to 1960, mostly linked to a Pop figurative style within the so-called School of Pistoia.
In 1962 he exhibited his Necrology. In Rome, he met Cesare Vivaldi, who invited him to participate in the exhibition Revort I - Documents of Objective Artwork in Europe, in Palermo in 1965. During this period Roberto Barni was interested in a type of minimalist-conceptual experience that would later be surpassed when with a symbolic artwork, Resurrection of 1972 (10 years after exhibiting his necrology) 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, at Charles Lienhrd in Basel.
In 1976 he used the term anachronism for the first time, claiming that the artist must have a vision of art that escapes the concept of time: it is not conditioned by it or by contemporary techniques and materials. Some critics such as Italo Mussa, Maurizio Calvesi and Marisa Vescovo began to promote this artistic vision, but Roberto Barni did not want to be associated with a particular movement, preferring personal research.
From 1980 to 1983 Roberto Barni executed the iconographic cycle Fatherhood. In 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 artist from Pistoia increased greatly, leading him to exhibit not only in Italy but also in the main European cities and in America.
In the early eighties he exhibited at the Festival of the Two Worlds 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 never ceased: the artist indeed 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 Montecarlo Sculpture Biennale. During this period Roberto Barni began to dedicate himself more and more to sculpture and created the artworks: Silent Act, Nursery Rhyme, Vacina, Opposite Views.
In 1997 he exhibited at Palazzo Fabbroni and the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, and in 1999 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Reims.
The group exhibition Fermentations with Antonino Bove, Giuseppe Chiari, Omar Galliani and Marco Nereo Rotelli at the Palazzo Ducale in Lucca dates back to 2000.
From 1999 to 2000 he created several sculptures, including Continuo for the Daniel Spoerri collection in Seggiano and The Great Vacina for the Pecci Museum of Prato.
In 2001 he collaborated with Alessandro Bagnai and Alessandro Poggiali, presenting the artworks 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 around the world.