Claudio Parmiggiani

In 1970, the young Claudio Parmiggiani installed one of his first institutional exhibitions at the Galleria Civica in Modena, in a room that had been abandoned for many years. As he was moving various dust-covered objects, he was struck by the pristine silhouettes they left behind them: traces of a presence, images drawn by time. This is how the artist says he came to conceive his first Delocazioni (Displacements), works fashioned from soot and smoke, which he created by lighting a brazier and letting its particles settle around objects arranged along white-painted wooden panels.

Parmiggiani has never stopped creating Delocazioni, developing a unique, timeless technique over the course of a five-decade-long career. His hand never touches it: he stands back, not as a creator who shapes but as an observer who reveals, a catalyst of natural forces.

The silhouettes that appear as a result bear witness to what was: the imprint of a distant memory of familiar objects that nonetheless have never really been observed. “Presences” as the artist calls them. His recurrent motifs include flasks and bottles (reminiscent of his mentor Giorgio Morandi), butterflies and ancient sculptures, along with whole libraries of anonymous books, which are certainly among his most enigmatic and emblematic works.

Often created in monumental proportions during in situ installations, the libraries embody the dialectic that informs all the artist’s work: between risk and caution, presence and absence, creation and destruction.

Born in Luzzara, near Parma, in 1943, Claudio Parmiggiani studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Modena. When still very young, he attended the studio run by the painter Giorgio Morandi, who was to have a profound influence on his work and artistic ethics. His first solo exhibition was held in 1965 at the Feltrinelli bookshop in Bologna, where he presented a series of painted plasters he described as “sculpted paintings”. At the time, he was close to the Gruppo 63 and the poets gathered around Luciano Anceschi and his magazine Il Verri, with whom he formed lasting and very fertile friendships – a proximity expressed by the publication of numerous artist’s books during his career.

In 1970, Parmiggiani came up with his first Delocazioni: works born of shadow and fire, created by letting smoke and soot settle around objects so as only to leave traces of their presence. The absence has become the common thread of the artist’s career. Silent bells, shattered glass, pigment and light are so many recurring motifs, laden with symbolic meaning, that Parmiggiani deploys in such unique in situ creations.

Artist and poet, Parmiggiani is the author of several literary works. He currently lives and works in Parma.