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Florence: the Master Talani fulfilled the biggest strappo of frescoin the world
FLORENCE 16/11/2006 - Something has happened in Italy at last, and particularly in the cradle of Art, Florence. On last 20th September 2006 one of the most important artistic events of the last years took place: inside Santa Maria Novella Station in Florence it was inaugurated the colossal fresco by the master Giampaolo Talani, one of the few contemporary painters still able to execute a work of those dimesions.
Only after two months from the first bush-stroke on the almost 80 sm. of the big fresco which combines the ancient trade with some innovative technical aspects, Giampaolo Talani's work and the revolutionary structure planned to receive and support the hanging wall were unveiled to scholars, art critics and the large public.
The fulfilment of the fresco, patronised by Regione Toscana and by the Comune di Firenze in collaboration with Grandi Stazioni, enters into the restructuring and redevelopment plan of the main Italian train stations. It represents an artistic operation of extraordinary value and enriches the historc building designed by the architect Giovanni Michelucci in the '30s, now considered one of the most significant examples of the Italian functionalist architecture.
Partenze (departures), contemporary icon of the traveller, is the theme of Talani's big fresco: a train of mankind in everlasting departure or arrival, because only the journey, after all, has a sense. It is more a journey of shadows and thoughts than a journey of bodies. Souls and minds are represented with the red burdens of memories - the suitcases are red, an absolute colour - feelings, and hopes which always accompany our existences. These figures are thought specifically for Santa Maria Novella, which presents in its space the same almost incorporeal humankind that every days crosses the space of a train station. The monumental work Partenze is the first fresco in a train station with presents the ancient Renaissance technique, a technique that today regains renewed topicality and strength.
The fresco painting, glory of the Italian art, has always been considered the most demanding artistic technique. Michelangelo himself defined it as the men painting for it binds the capability and the resources of the executor at most. Talani carried out the fresco according to the classical rules of the ancient buon fresco technique: the wet plaster receives the pigment watereddown pigment and combines it in the wall, so that the fresco is not a painting on the wall but inside the wall. In due time the carbonation processes of the slaked lime crystallize and define the painting, exactly as the technique demands. Also the strappo of fresco was made by Talani, who established the new world record of this technique. The fulfilment of the plan has involved a great technical challenge. The fresco installation was possible thanks to a housing hanging system with an aluminium frame and sheets of cell glass. This system is unique of its kind and designed by the architect Alessandro Panichi who made possible for the first time to support a frescoed wall with an 80 sm. surface and a ton and half weight, but keeping it detached from the preexistent structures. So the work does not touch the marble walls of the historical Station.
Florence News - a6.11.16.13.47
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