B I O G R A P H Y
Mauro Pipani
Mauro Pipani's multifaceted artistic career starts in Bologna in the 1970s and develops over time through a deep and dynamic personal research and academic teaching, between Cesena and Verona. In his works, the memories of his native places of Riviera Romagnola symbiotically interact with the outside world in continuous evolution, in an ever renewed light that is rooted in the past (never meant in a purely nostalgic way), gives life to the present and projects into the future.
The pictorial space with its layers of gauze, fabrics, glued papers, metal fragments, resins, and with the typically monochrome backgrounds of whites and grays, becomes a sort of musical staff, on which Mauro Pipani composes his melody of signs, traces and vibrant words, in an almost suspended space-time dimension. Memories, hopes, visions for the future and glimpses of the present are intertwined in the artist's interiority and find their tangible shape in the material support, through a pictorial and poetic discourse which is, for its intimate and authentic nature, open.
Mauro Pipani lives and works in Cesena and Verona. He carries out his artistic activity through painting, photography and design and he has dozens of personal and collective exhibitions of national and international importance; he is present in the Art circuit with important galleries. Pipani is a professor of Painting and Painting Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts in Verona, and he carries out his artistic activity between Oriola (a small hillside district of Cesena, FC) and Verona.
Artistic formation and first exhibitions:
In the 70s, during his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna with Pompilio Mandelli, Mauro Pipani made his debut in the Bolognese art scene with the collective “la Comune”, a group of young artists directed by Dario Fo (1972). He was also one of the founders of the collective of via delle Biscie, which acted in a space, Villa Enrica, entrusted in management by the municipality of Bologna, which in 1973 introduced itself at the Feltrinelli Library in Bologna. The exponents of the group (who were very young and socially committed) faced the first still juvenile artistic experiments and immediately got noticed: in the same year, they participated in the prestigious Suzzara Prize and caught the interest of Mario De Micheli, who in 1975 presented an exhibition of the collective at the Galvani Municipal Gallery in Bologna. In the same years, the attendance of the literary and poetic group gathered around the magazine “Sul porto” (founded by the poets Ferruccio Benzoni, Stefano Simoncelli and Walter Valeri), was also fundamental. Thanks to these connections, Mauro Pipani got in touch with figures such as the elderly Alfonso Gatto, a great link between literary culture and visual arts, Franco Fortini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Dario Bellezza and, above all, Dario Fo; in this period, Pipani also collaborated at the “Comune” in the excited season of the Palazzina Liberty.
His main exhibitions include:
1998: Acque di Superficie, curated by Marco Meneguzzo.
2001: Figure del Novecento 2. Oltre l’Accademia at the Civic Art Gallery and the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, invited by Adriano Baccilieri.
2003: Ossidiane, curated by Alberto Zanchetta.
2015: Gli alberi sono Anime, curated by Annamaria Bernucci; Arborea, curated by Renato Barilli.
2016: New Faustian World, curated by Raffaele Quattrone
2019: Atmosferica, curated by Franco Bertoni
2021: Salis, curated by Vittoria Coen
2022: Salis Venice, curated by Vittoria Coen
They have written for him:
Ferruccio Benzoni
Pier Alberto Cilione Porceddu