Folon Firenze

This publication is dedicated to the Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon on the occasion of one of the most important anthological shows in Italy. The book is a comprehensive and up-to-date monograph on this major world artist, whose work has extraordinary expressive and poetic intensity.
Edited by Marilena Pasquali, the book (catalogue to the show in Florence, held fifteen years after Folon’s first painting exhibition at the Marino Marini Museum) presents approximately two hundred and fifty works including famous watercolours, small objets rich in imagination and irony, and, above all, the sculptures – monumental or smaller – that are a true revelation.
The artist is famous throughout the world for his watercolours and graphic work; in the 1990s he began to sculpt (the show at the Metropolitan in New York is a highpoint in the artist’s career) and his pieces were widely acclaimed by critics and public at an international level.
In contrast to the sense of equilibrium and light emanating from his paintings, his sculptural works express the artist’s darker side: a sense of disquiet replaces lightness, and the colours of life’s fear disturb the harmony. The artist’s northern roots come to the surface in this transformation. In his sculptural works there is, nonetheless, that typical Folon propensity to capture light, air and space. As the artist himself observed: “All my sculptures are about the sky, it’s a way of putting the sky into sculpture”.
The monograph offers readers an informative and thematic journey which includes an examination of Folon’s favourite subjects – Flight, The Hand, Travel, The Gaze, The Head, The Totem, Birds – illustrated through watercolours, sculptures, objects, screen prints and posters.
Folon Firenze, the volume’s title, reflects the relationship between the artist and Florence and Tuscany, a bond that began in the 1950s when the twenty-year old artist hitchhiked through the area. The publication includes texts by Federico Fellini, Jean-Michel Folon, Marilena Pasquali, Ray Bradbury, Emilio Tadini, in addition to the catalogue of watercolours and sculptures, an artist biography (edited by Federica Filippi Gabardi) and a bibliography.
Florence, Forte di Belvedere e Sala d’Arme di Palazzo Vecchio
13 may – 18 september 2005