The Transformative Power of Art and Ideas
Fresco Portraits by Fabrizio Ruggiero
Limonaia di Villa La Pietra, New York University, Florence
26 April – 15 June 2017
The exhibition “The Transformative Power of Art and Ideas”, organized by La Pietra Dialogues, NYU Florence, opened on April 26, 2017 at Villa La Pietra and remained on view until June 15, 2017 (by reservation at lapietra.reply@nyu.edu).
The first section of the exhibition, set in the Limonaia of Villa La Pietra, pays tribute to nine artists and intellectuals who dedicated their visionary and creative talents to social justice, equality, and human dignity.
Portraits
Maya Angelou (USA)
According to Fabrizio Ruggiero, the ancient medium of fresco is the ideal language to portray the human face. Each portrait becomes a map, guiding the viewer through the deeper landscape of the soul. The layered textures of sand and pigments give a three-dimensional quality to the work that Ruggiero calls “effigies.”
These portraits were first exhibited in June 2015 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York as part of the “Time for Global Action” campaign, marking the 70th anniversary of the UN Charter.
Joan Baez (USA)
Jiddu Krishnamurti (India)
Miriam Makeba (South Africa)
Edgar Morin (France)
Sebastião Salgado (Brazil)
Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
Gong Li (China)
Malala Yousafzai (Pakistan)
Villa Sassetti Section
The second section of the exhibition, hosted in Villa Sassetti, focuses on the impact of two pivotal artists of the early 20th century: Marcel Duchamp and Vasilij Kandinsky. Their portraits face each other in visual dialogue.
Duchamp pioneered conceptual art while Kandinsky opened the path to abstraction and analytical painting. Ruggiero explores this duality as a creative tension — between concept and intuition — through the act of painting.
According to Pliny the Elder, “painting was born from tracing the contours of a human shadow — the boundary between light and darkness, known and unknown, order and chaos.” Ruggiero sees painting as the act of drawing that boundary — a middle path between extremes.
This exhibition was part of the “Ideas, People, Change” initiative curated by Davide Lombardo, NYU Florence.
Related Works
Sculptures
Monochrome Painting
