Lazzura, 1943

Claudio Parmiggiani is one of the current international art scene’s protagonists. Born in Luzzara, he trained at the Institute of Fine Arts in Modena. At a very young age, he spent some time with Giorgio Morandi (whose influence was more ethical than stylistic) and began to use painted plaster casts for his works, which the artist called ‘sculpted paintings’.

His first real exhibition was held in 1965 at the Feltrinelli bookshop in Bologna: at the time there was the Gruppo 63 and poets gathered around Luciano Anceschi’s “verri”. Parmiggiani became very close to them.

He published book-works such as Atlante (Scheiwiller, 1970, in collaboration with Nanni Balestrini and Villa), √ – 2, l’arte è una scienza esatta (Mello and Persano, 1977), De vita solitaria (Christian Stein, 2009, in collaboration with Pietro Citati). Stabat mater. Dies Iræ. Deux Contrepoints. (in collaboration with Jean-Luc Nancy, Tallone Editore, 2016).

There are many intuitions that since the mid-1960s have characterised his research in a totally original and groundbreaking way. A radically iconoclastic spirit underlies all his work. His first Delocazioni date from 1970, works of shadows and imprints made with fire, dust and smoke, a radical reflection on the theme of absence and trace, which he developed further until it became the guiding principle of all his work. These works will take on a character of strong visual and emotional impact; we recall the theatrical Delocazioni made at the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain in Geneva (1995), at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1997), at the Promotrice delle Belle Arti in Turin (1988), at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier (2002), at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2003), at the Collège des Bernardins, Paris (2008).

Since the beginning of the 1980s, he has carried out a series of important museum projects. Terra (1988), a sphere with the imprint of the artist’s hands, buried in the cloister of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, is an expression of the spiritual nature of the work, such even when it is invisible and a place for dialogue with its absence.

His numerous interventions include exhibitions at the Institut Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt (1992), at the Gallery of Modern Art in Prague (1993), at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1997), at MAMCO in Geneva (1995) and at the Promotrice delle Belle Arti in Turin (1998). In the 2000s he had important exhibitions in Cuba (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, 2006), Pistoia (Apocalypsis Cum Figuris, 2007) and Parma (Naufragio con Spettatore, 2010). Most recently in Moscow (Centrо of Contemporary Art – NCCA, 2017) and in Nashville at the Frist Art Museum (Claudio Parmiggiani: Dematerialization, 2019).

He has presented his works at numerous other prestigious international institutions, both public and private. His permanent interventions include Il faro d’Islanda, (2000), Teatro dell’arte e della guerra, (2006) at the Teatro Farnese in Parma, Ex-voto at the Louvre Museum (2007), Porta Speciosa for the Sacro Eremo di Camaldoli (2013), an intervention at the Camera degli Amori at Villa Medici in Rome (2015), the altar for the Cathedral of Reggio Emilia (2011) and the Basilica of Gallarate (2018), as well as the Crown of Thorns (2014) in the High Altar of the Church of San Fedele, Milan and Naufragio con Spettatore (2010) in the Church of San Marcellino, Parma.

In the more strictly editorial field, mention should be made of the volumes Poesie dipinte (Frankfurter Kunstverein, 1981), Il sangue del colore (Scheiwiller, 1988), Stella Sangue Spirito (three different editions: Pratiche, 1995 edited by Stefano Crespi, Actes Sud, 2003 and Istituto Cubano del Libro, 2007), Incipit (Allemandi, 2008), Una fede in niente ma totale (Le Lettere, 2010) Lettere a Luisa (Mainz 2016).