Yan Pei-Ming

Visiting Palazzo Strozzi is always an honor. Arches, stained glass windows, stairways, everything smells of the splendid Florentine Renaissance. And if the walls crown an illustrious author like Yan Pei Ming, you get a great break. However, we cannot speak of a light stop as with other imaginative performances at Palazzo Strozzi, because the author carries within himself the drama of death which is tinged with black, red, blue depending on the period of one's life. Death has the face of dictators, old and new, of the Crucified Christ, of skulls drawn from the scan of one's own skull. Excellent painter, watercolor acrobat, Yan Pei Ming is also a painter-journalist of the 70s. During his stay in Rome he was impressed by the drama-soaked corpses of Aldo Moro and Pier Paolo Pasolini. What to say: delving into the life of this great artist makes one deeply feel the sense of tragedy inherent in humanity with a bold spirit of denunciation of all the atrocities wanted by man, first of all the war that has faces, colors of him. So from the rich exhibition, 30 works, we can deduce a succession of personal stories, newspaper covers, filmography and famous works of art such as the Monnalisa who dares her ambiguous smile in the midst of so much tragedy. The only sweet light is the mother who recalls the roots, the security, the nest, the Buddhist temple in which he was raised. The beautiful picture of a paradisiacal landscape in which she alone deserves to rest in peace is dedicated to her.

At Palazzo Strozzi till the 3rd September 2023

Valentina Niccolai