Gianfranco Ferroni

Gianfranco Ferroni was born in Livorno in 1927 and died in Bergamo in 2001. “He was among the first artists who, at the beginning of my collection, taught me to know and respect painting, silence, light, and realism. A different, original realism that did not merely reproduce the figure, but described its sensitivity and humanity, placing man, with his needs, joys, and anxieties, at the center of art. Even today, twenty years later, those same feelings guide me in the search for works by young contemporary artists. My first encounter with the Maestro took place in his studio on Via Balbo. I descended into a basement and entered a dark and truly unkempt place. I had read somewhere that this was his temple where he performed rituals. My eyes, quickly scanning the room, had a completely different impression. It seemed to me a tormented place. A cot in one corner where he surely had eaten, smoked, and slept; a rug so thick with dust and faded that it would shock most, and a floor that completed a room more akin to a solitary confinement cell than a temple. A tall, thin man welcomed me, whose features reminded me of a Chinese person. His hair looked wet and clung to his face, his clothes were dark and a bit shabby. He had a pack of Marlboro cigarettes tightly held in those pianist hands, impossible not to notice: long, slender, and skeletal. He appeared withdrawn, yet very determined at the same time. He barely made me comfortable, telling me that he had nothing to show me. I was struck by the way he moved around the room, continuously smoking as if waiting for something. I tried to break the ice by asking about the work I had just purchased, but I soon realized he was not a man of many words; he did not like to talk and did not dwell too much on anything, let alone comment on his works and listen to my collector’s ramblings. In those moments, a quote from Carrieri came to mind: he put his ears in his pockets. After the silent lunch at Arci Bellezza, interrupted only by the continuous noise of the lighter igniting his cigarettes, I returned home, and during the journey, I continued to think about our meeting and where I had seen that studio before. I had the feeling of having experienced déjà vu, and like magic, a self-portrait from ‘77 came back to mind, Me Sitting in the Room, which I had certainly seen reproduced in some catalog. That way of portraying himself without self-celebration, in work clothes and hands dangling over his knees, that electric wire silently running along the floor perfectly reproduced tile by tile, and that inseparable pack of Marlboro thrown on the ground surrounded by used cigarette butts were not just a simple representation of his daily life but a true hymn to what is unseen, to the slow wear of man in a society dominated by anxieties and frenzy. The perspective of the floor was nothing but a representation of an escape route toward individual freedom, and the interplay of light and shadow made me think of life and death. That is who Ferroni was: a genius, someone who spoke with painting. A man who feels, as and before any of us, the emotions that the contemporary context determines. The not-empty emptiness of his works is so dense with meaning that it is hard to look away from his canvases, waiting for something to happen. It was that day that I decided I would pursue his most significant works even to the ends of the earth. And so it was.”