Francesco Gennari

Francesco Gennari, born in 1973, chose to leave the law faculty just five exams away from graduation and now lives and works between Milan and Pesaro. Reflective and enigmatic, he draws inspiration from the work of the artist and poet Giorgio de Chirico, as well as the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The central themes of his works, meticulously detailed and leaving nothing to chance, address the existence of humanity with its limitations and the yearning for the infinite. They originate "in that place beyond time and space," which is his studio, where he isolates himself "to perform magic and experiments." Beetles, earthworms, and snails, treated with reverent respect, animate his creations. He employs materials such as wood, marble, terracotta, whipped cream, gin, and meringue to realize his art, stating that “each one carries with it a memory, an emotion, a sensation, and in this sense, mixing materials is like mixing concepts.” His attire consists of a white shirt, a loden coat, a winter squirrel fur version, and Clark's shoes, embodying his identity in both dress and essence.

Gennari introduces the concept of the demiurge, which "does not refer to the classical Platonic demiurge," where the divine craftsman contemplates ideas and molds matter according to them. Instead, it emerges innately "to place himself at the center of the world, so that this world becomes in his image and likeness." The Iannaccone Collection is unique in the world for possessing all the self-portraits created by the artist, among which one stands out: a composition between a square and a triangle. Two geometric forms converge in a block of black Belgian marble, immersed in a bath of gin to allow the liquid to permeate the porosity of the marble. The gin symbolizes the abstract entity concealed within the artist, whose emotions are partially controllable, leading him to make choices driven not by reason but by instinct. "That day I woke up and strongly desired to be between two perfect geometries and to reflect on myself there."

Gennari's work unfolds as a multi-chapter narrative, with his latest creation—his children, as he affectionately calls them—titled The Body Returns to the Earth, the Soul Returns to the Sky (with a Cherry Stain in the Heart). Just as snails abandon their shells upon death, Gennari sheds his own shell and releases his soul at dusk, where, for de Chirico, “volumes and forms fused. Men and animals passed like silent shadows in the twilight light. A long dreamlike light. Strange sounds came muted; only the wheels of the mind spun dizzyingly.” Maurice Blanchot wrote, "Every true work of art can only be an allegory of a failure, yet it is only in this way that the artist can attempt to open a window beyond the limits of the finite, through a quest that can never have an end.”