Giampaolo Talani Biography
Giampaolo Talani (San Vincenzo, 13 March 1955 – Pisa, 16 January 2018) was an Italian painter and sculptor. The 80s and 90s were characterized by works for the private sector, with numerous solo exhibitions in Italian and international galleries, and exhibitions, including anthologies, which took place in public spaces. The vocation for public work returned significantly at the beginning of the 2000s, with the panels for the staircase of the San Vincenzo Town Hall and, above all, with the fresco Departures in the Santa Maria Novella station in Florence (2002-2006), the first artistic decoration carried out in the station from the time of Ottone Rosai's Tuscan Landscapes. In these works we can see a now mature style which, without ever abandoning the figurative, moved towards more dynamic forms and a looser pictorial technique. At the same time, on similar themes and those of pictorial works, Talani continued his activity as a sculptor, especially of bronze works. The link with Florence was reiterated with the solo exhibition entitled Rosa dei Venti at Palazzo Vecchio (2008) and with the temporary placement of a three-metre high sculpture in the Uffizi loggia. In those same years he collaborated with Rai 1 on the television show Rosa dei Venti - L'isola che c'è (December 2009). Personal exhibitions followed, among others, in Trieste, Pietrasanta (2010), Fiesole, Turin (2011), Florence, Pescara, Taranto (2012), Palermo, Lucca, Como (2013), Spoleto (2014), Mantua (Casa del Mantegna, 2015). At the conclusion of the celebrations for the 150 years of the Unification of Italy, Talani was commissioned to create a bronze bust of Garibaldi, which was placed in two copies in the staircase of the Quirinale palace and in the Italian Senate, the painting L'ombra dell' hero (Pinacoteca del Quirinale) and the fresco A Thousand Men, which entered the collection of the Central Museum of the Risorgimento at the "Vittoriano" in Rome. For this and other works Vittorio Sgarbi spoke, regarding Talani, of a new impetus to the so-called "State Art". In June 2009 Talani was the only Italian artist invited to Berlin for the opening of the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall, with the work Die Mauer - The Umbrellas of Freedom. In 2011 he participated in the 54th international art exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
