Nanni Valentini 1932 – 1985
Nanni Valentini is one of the most singular and lively personalities in the artistic explorations of the postwar period.
His approach to material, colour and figure immediately marked him out as unique in the contemporary debate. His learned and wise approach, combined with the dry potency of his sculptural visions, had no parallel among them.
Nanni Valentini began by attending the art academy for ceramic decoration in Pesaro in 1945 before moving on to the institute of art in Faenza, where he continued until 1953. Be started to collaborate with Bruno Baratti’s studio in Pesaro and to attend the academy in Bologna. In 1956 he was admitted to the circle of Liverani’s Galleria La Salita and formed friendships with Gastone Novelli, Emilio Villa and Gino Marotta. He won the first prizes at the XIV Faenza Competition (he will be awarded even in 1961 and 1977), and the XI Vicenza Ceramic Exhibition, followed by the one he won in 1958 at the Everson Museum of Fine Arts of Syracuse (New York State); many other awards in the subsequent years.
In autumn 1957 he moved to Milan, where he exhibited at the Triennale and began to project the Serie natura with Luigi Massoni. He associated with Scanavino, Tancredi, Arnaldo and Giò Pomodoro, Ettore Sottsass and Lucio Fontana. The latter organised the first one man-show for Valentini in the Milanese Ariete gallery in 1958. A strong attraction to the study of the most disparate intellectual fields, and his immersion in the Milanese scene of the 1960s rapidly carried his poetics from ceramics to a fundamental reasoning about the sculptural form and the image.In 1960 Valentini exhibited with Giò Pomodoro in the Galleria del Giorno in Milan and had a one-man show in the Salone Annunciata in the same city. In 1967 he was represented in Milan with a one-man exhibition of paintings and sculptures in the Salone Annunciata, followed by a one-man show in the Galleria Segnapassi in Pesaro. He began to teach in the art institute in Monza, where he was remain until 1985.
In the 1970s works such as Paesaggi d’argilla and Garze expressed his desire to reinterpret the clay of the earth as the possibility of infinite transitions and realities, and no longer as a simple medium.
This was the starting-point of his profound, immensely rich artistic poetics consisting of clumps of earth, landscapes, bricks, gauzes, faces and dwellings.
In the crucial decade 1975-1985 Valentini was recognised as one of the most important living ceramic sculptors; in 1976 he secured a place for himself on the Milanese scene with a memorable one-man show of paintings (Trasparenze) and sculptures in Carla Pellegrini’s Galleria Milano.
After years of experimentation and further development, in 1975 he presented the ‘gauzes’ at the Cologne Expo with Studio Casati from Merate. Here he met Carla Pellegrini, who organised his fundamental one-man show in the Galleria Milano in 1976. In the following year he moved to the studio in via Tiziano 42, Arcore and had a one-man show of sculptures and works on paper in Lo Spazio in Brescia.
In the following year he showed in the Galleria del Falconiere in Falconara with Un ombelico per Empedocle, and in 1979 with Una materia per Pitagora in the Uxa gallery in Novara, Terra-numero and Terra-bagnato in Studio Casati in Merate, and a one-man show in Galleria Rota in Heilbronn.
In 1980 he opened a new one-man show in the Galleria Milano with his ‘luoghi’, then in the circle Il Cortile in Bologna, and was represented in the Galleria Ca’Vègla in Salice Terme with Endimione e i 28 volte di Selene. In 1982 he presented Il vaso e il polipo in the Galleria Vera Biondi in Florence, L’ombra di Peter Schlemihl in Galerie -e in Munich, and had a one-man show in the Venice Biennale. In 1983 he presented Endimione e i 28 volte di Selene in the Mercato del Sale in Milan.
In 1984 he inaugurated a one-man show in the Padiglione d’arte contemporanea in Milan, where he presented Deriva, Annunciazione and Il dialogo, and in May he inaugurated his one-man show on ‘homes’ in the Museu de Ceràmica in Barcelona. In the same year he had a one-man show of works on paper in the Civica raccolta del disegno in Salò, and presented … dove si racconta in Studio Dossi in Bergamo. In 1985 he exhibited L’inno della perla in the Libreria Giulia in Rome and the Galleria San Luca in Bologna.
His works have also been shown and are present in many public and private collections, including the Museo del Novecento in Milan, the Museo Civico di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Varese, the Everson Museum of Fine Arts in Syracuse, the Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro in Milan, the Museu de Ceràmica in Barcelona, the Hetjens Museum in Dusseldorf, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the GAM in Turin, the Galleria Civica in Modena, and the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Faenza.