Mauro Staccioli

Masterpieces is an ideal journey through the history of twentieth-century and contemporary Italian art, with top works exhibited by the crème de la crème of Tuscan art galleries affiliated to A.N.G.A.M.C.
From 22 February, in the heart of Florence, jewel in the 100% Italian Baglioni Hotels Collection Relais Santa Croce is hosting the second appointment in this artistic initiative arising from the partnership with A.N.G.A.M.C. (Italian Association of Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries). Together with Galleria Il Ponte from Florence, the hotel will present the work by Mauro Staccioli Anello 1996, a 150 cm-diameter ring made of corten steel.
Rings are without doubt one of the most emblematic shapes reproduced by the artist in his sculptures. Using it for the first time in 1991 in Andorra in the Pyrenees (Andorra ’91), in an interview with Luca Massimo Barbero, Staccioli said: “[…] At a certain point in my artistic career, I started to feel that barriers were an excessive form, practically preventing the world behind them from being seen or heard. I started to think that, in this phase of my work at least, the pleasure of seeing, touching and thinking must not be limited. […] The intervention in Ordino d’Arcalis, in Andorra, came about to go past the image of the round shapes that still obstruct the landscape. The intervention was inspired by the watery, ferrous, vital beauty given off by this space […]”
The work on display, Anello 1996, is an integral part of this research and his investigation into the section of an isosceles triangle which defines a circular area at its centre. This Staccioli adjusts continually, playing on the relations between the band (height and thickness) and the space that the ring leaves free to the wandering gaze. Roma 2011, the large ring installed in the parterre in front of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, somehow consecrates his striving to cross through, to create a sculpture that can be crossed but also frames…