Art returns to Art (tr. note:  Art returns to Art) is an expression Luciano Fabro coined for a series of lectures he held between 1981 and 1997 at universities, academies and museums all over the world.  Assuming this expression as the title of an exhibition to be held at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence means embracing the principle whereby, though occurring with different modalities through time and despite the inevitable fractures that mark its development, all of art unfolds from a single root which is articulated, in a continuous flow, in the different territories of our culture.

A discourse on the origins and the persistence of models and forms is the very essence of art history, of its languages and its visual and plastic modalities of all time; it also introduces a reflection which, through memory, evokes connections and complex thoughts, forming a system that enables reasoning on figures, the processes of composing, and the archetypes of making art.

In the work of the great artists, this approach of mediation and uninterrupted reformulation of the sources does not lead to empty nostalgic evocations, but instead goes well beyond the praxis of the ‘copy’, of the d’après and of the quotation, and generates profoundly innovative creations:  the decision this exhibition proposes thus considers history and iconology as vibrant forms of affiliation, for a language still full of interpretational possibilities.

With selected works from S.M.A.K. (Ghent)

Francis Bacon – The Cardinal