The Artist

Sculptor and painter Roberto Barni was born in Pistoia in 1939 and currently lives and works in Florence.

He started painting in around the 1950s, and towards the end of the decade he produced his first abstract paintings with different materials: iron, wood, photography, newspapers.

After a period of Pop Art as part of the “Pistoia School”, Roberto Barni began experimenting with Minimalism and Conceptual art, which led him to also creating filiform sculptures.

In 1992, Roberto Barni, who is considered one of the exponents of culture painting, participated in the exhibition “The Artist and the Book in Twentieth-Century Italy” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, alongside Balla, Giorgio De Chirico, Marinetti, Modigliani, Vedova, and many other artists.

His works are exhibited in numerous Italian and American cities, and are part of some important national and public international collections: the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Uffizi in Florence, the Queens Museum in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London.

The Sculpture

The poetics of his work expresses something that is destined to take shape, with a continuous exchange between two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality, and between painting and sculpture.

According to the artist, it is essential to save the form from lapsing into banality, and it is therefore necessary to give the art form an unusual finesse, something which would become the main characteristic of his works.

His art draws from a repertoire of industrial and artificial images, topography, enormous landscapes with strong contrasts painted in enamel, and painted iron objects.

The sculpture in our lobby is called “Progeny”. The three full-size figures which extend from the main form can be interpreted as descent; lineage.

In our garden you will find the masterpiece “Atto muto”.