Andrea Granchi, artist, film-maker, curator and lecturer, was born in Florence Italy in 1947. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1969. He won the “City of Florence Award” for young artists in 1966 and the “Stibbert Award” for painting in 1971. He is considered to be one of the leading artists of the Italian “Cinema d’Artista” movement. According to L. V. Masini (1989), he has produced “…some of the most lucid, ironic, perfect “Film d’Artista”, a genre which in Italy he was one of the first to practice”. Between 1976 and 1980 he curated several “Cinema d’Artista” expositions both in Italy and abroad, (Paris Center G. Pompidou-Cinémathèque Française, Philadelphia). Among the numerous participations we highlight the Venice Biennale (1978 and 2011), the Milan Triennale (1981), the Rome Quadriennale (1986), Arte Italiana Oggi (Stockolm 1987), Estecne (Valencia, Palau de La Scala, 1990 ), Artist’s Cinema in Tuscany (Centro L. Pecci di Prato, 2004), Travelers on the Flaminia (Museum of Emigration, Gualdo Tadino, 2006), and more recently in The expanded gaze. Italian artist cinema 1912-2012 in Catanzaro (2012) and Luce. Science Cinema Art (Governor’s Palace, Parma, 2015). In 2017, two of his films were acquired by the MAXXI in Rome on the occasion of “Double screen. Artist’s films and videos in Italy from the 60s to today” curated by B. Di Marino.
He is among the first to create works in which he brings together plastic elements with projections of moving images, films, photographs and sound (Allegro e Pensieroso for “Enchanted Rooms”, Milan, 1980; Il Turco e l’Italiana, film work for “Piazza della Palla”, Florence, 1980; The Inventor and the Epigono, film installation for the Milan Triennale, 1981; Drawing of Time, Civic Art Gallery of Volterra, 2013).
Among the personal exhibitions we remember Chaser of Giants at Palazzo Pinucci in Florence (1989), The man chasing the shadow in Lugano (1989), Oblique journeys at the Tour Fromage in Aosta (1993), Parallel Destinies to the CART of Falconara Marittima (2009), L’Adret and L’Envers in the Castle of S. Rhémy-en-Bosses for the Valle d’Aosta Region with works from 1967 to 2010, the anthological exhibition The place where destinies meet in the Civic Art Gallery of Volterra (2013), Viaggi immobili (Motionless Journeys) at the Galleria del Carbone in Ferrara (2019) and, in the same year, Andrea Granchi, the first of a series of exhibitions called “The Sacred in Contemporary Art” at the new Museum of Sacred Art of San Salvatore’s Abbey, Siena.
He has various works in buildings and public places, including the “eyes” of the two apsidal windows of the church of Saint Maddalena in Saturnia (1996), the fresco with Saint Lucia guardian of charity made for the Jubilee of 2000 in the church of S. Giuseppe and Lucia in Florence, the installation Sedentary Traveler in front of the Grande created for the “Open Air Museum” of the Municipality of Etroubles in Valle d’Aosta (2005).
As a teacher he has long held the chair of Painting in the Academies of Fine Arts of Carrara and Florence where he also held, until 2012, the Laboratory of “New Expressive Media”, for which he initiated a new research direction on the “Artist’s Book” with a series of exhibitions including the Oggetto LIBERo (State Archives of Florence, 2007). In 2010 he conceived and edited Trajectories Città delle Arti with the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, the Cherubini Conservatory, the Higher Institute for Artistic Industries and the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, intertwining contemporary art productions with historical seminars- arts, musical events and concerts. In 2017, Andrea Granchi was awarded with the “Phoenix Art Award” in the context of the “Phoenix Art Exhibition” curated by the China National Accademy of Painting in Fenghuang. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the “Polo Culturale Pietro Aldi”, a new museum inaugurated in the town of Saturnia, Grosseto, in 2016.
He is the President of the “Classe di Pittura” (Painting Class) of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno.
Bibliographic note:
There are numerous exhibition catalogs and monographic publications on Andrea Granchi. These include the monograph Andrea Granchi. Irony and transparency, edited by Giovanna dalla Chiesa, Electa, 1989; the catalog of the Andrea Granchi exhibition. Oblique Journeys, edited by Janus and Lara-Vinca Masini, Fabbri, Milan, 1993; the small volume S. Lucia Guardian of Charity which illustrates the construction site for the homonymous fresco, Polistampa Edizioni, 2000 with texts by Antonio Paolucci, Mons, Timothy Verdon, Don Giancarlo Lanforti and Andrea Granchi himself; and the trilingual catalog Andrea Granchi L’Adret et l’Envers, edited by Alessandro Parrella, Valle d’Aosta Region, 2010. It is included in the volume of Lara-Vinca Masini Contemporary Art: The line of the Model, vol. IV, Giunti, Florence, 1997, pp. 690-692; in the volume Cinema d’artista..Toscana 1964-1980 edited by Silvia Lucchesi and the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato, pp.79-100, 2005; in the volume Generation of the 1940s in the History of Italian Art of the 1900s – for generations by Giorgio Di Genova, Volume I-II, Bora editions, Bologna, 2009, and, more recently (2013), in the volume “Lo Sguardo Espanso. Italian artist cinema 1912-2012 “curated by Bruno Di Marino, Marco Meneguzzo and Andrea La Porta.
For the Degree Course in Art History of the University of Florence, on the recommendation of Professor Maria Grazia Messina, Priya Baldazzi was entrusted, in the 2015-16 academic year, with the thesis Andrea Granchi. Contributions and inventions for a critical theory of the artist’s film.
