POMA Liberatutti Foundation – Pescia
APRIL 10, 2025 – JULY 27, 2025
This exhibition pays homage to Venturino Venturi, the artist who more than any other has been able to transform the magic and complexity of the famous puppet into sign and matter. But Beyond Pinocchio is not just a tribute to Collodi’s character. The exhibition explores Venturino’s entire artistic research: from drawings to sculptures, from matrices to masks, from prints to tempera inspired by Pinocchio, revealing a path in which the puppet’s story is intertwined with a broader reflection on the human condition and the language of art.
The exhibition presents a core of seventy-five works, from the Venturino Venturi Archive, from the collection of Comune di Firenze – Musei Civici Fiorentini, from the Fondazione Nazionale Carlo Collodi, from the collection of BCC Banca Valdarno, and from prestigious private collections.
Thirty original tempera made by Venturino in 1986 for a special edition de The Adventures of Pinocchio, never exhibited to the public except for the presentation of the volume, convey an intense, dynamic Pinocchio, imbued with that primordial force that has always characterized the artist’s vision.
In Fourteen imprints in oil, executed between 1963 and 1968, the material becomes a substantial trace, through a technique in which the oil generates images with a strong expressive impact.
A prominent place is reserved for six wooden matrices carved to become the source of monotypes, balanced between geometric figuration and figural suggestion, which so fascinated Lucio Fontana and his circle. Used as matrices for a very short period – all the sheets derived from them bear the date 1948 – they were then transformed into sculptures by Venturino himself.
Fundamental in the artist’s career are the two sculptures dedicated to Pinocchio, both sketches for the large statue that was to be erected in the center of the Piazza dei Mosaici in Collodi Park. The Pinocchio from the collection of the BCC Banca Valdarno is a cast whose original in cement is found in the collections of the Vatican Museums; while the one in wood, iron and nails, from the Fondazione Nazionale Carlo Collodi, was presented by the sculptor on the occasion of the competition for the creation of the Monument to Pinocchio, in 1953, and is a precious testimony to the first conception of Pinocchio, which was never realized. A third sculpture, the Portrait of the architect Giovanni Michelucci, was made by Venturino on the occasion of the important partnership that linked him to the architect and which originated precisely from the Collodian enterprise, of which Michelucci was a sworn in and for which, in later times, he also contributed to the design of the park.
Also on display are eighteen painted papier-mâché masks, with which the artist explored new expressive dimensions through three-dimensionality. Characterized by essential lines and stylised shapes, they evoke the archetype of the puppet and its metamorphoses in portrait faces, embodying, in the tension between staticity and movement, the fundamental modalities of the artist’s sculptural modelling.
The exhibition itinerary is completed by the animated short film by Alice RovaiTurchino, which reworks Venturino’s world in a contemporary key, creating a bridge between his poetics and the artistic sensibilities of the present. A work that, through movement and sound, restores the vitality of Venturino’s sign and matter, projecting it into a new narrative dimension.
The exhibition will finally be accompanied by the videoDimmi Venturino… directed by Francesco Castellani containing interviews and materials from the Venturino Venturi Archive.
