Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze

The Figurare la parola exhibition presents the Bertini Collection, which is one of the most important collections of contemporary art editions. It was acquired three years ago by the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali and now is kept by the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.
The exhibition has been promoted and organised in collaboration with the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze.

The exhibition shows 220 works created during the 20^th century, which are displayed following the time-line of the European artistic movement.

The exhibition opens with some of the books published by Ambroise Vollard, the legendary Parisian art dealer and editor, who was considered the inventor of a new editorial genre: the livres de peintres. Illustrated books have always existed in the editorial history; the Vollard innovation consisted in the idea of commissioning an artist, instead of an illustrator, as if the book was a blank canvas. Thus extraordinary works were created, printed in limited editions and sold very expensively.
Pierre Bonnard, Georges Rouault and Pablo Picasso, just to mention a few, are among the artists which Vollard involved in this project.

We can also admire works by artists such as Braque, Gris, Derain, Kandinskij, Kirchner, Matisse, Chagall, Mirò, Bellmer, Duchamp, Ernst, Dalì and by the Italians Modigliani, De Chirico, Morandi, Burri, Carrà, Fontana, Baj.

The exhibition is completed by a section devoted to the artist’s books, many of which were realised by Italian artists, and a small but significant selection of book-object, created by artists of various nationalities.

The catalogue, printed by Vallecchi, is edited by Lucia Chimirri with contributions by Rossana Bossaglia, Enrico Crispolti, Giorgio Maffei, Antonio Paolucci, Mariantonietta Picone, Artemisia Calcagni, Lucia Chimirri, Piero Scapecchi.

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