ANTONIO BIANCALANI

Antonio Biancalani was born in Montelupo Fiorentino (Fi) in 1948. He felt a marked pictorial vocation from an early age. The exercise of painting and the participation in national prizes and exhibitions made it clear soon the need to deepen the experience and the technical and visual knowledge of the figurative arts. Therefore, he dedicated himself to the study of the human figure, which will remain one of the favorite themes to date. From '75 and for a few years, he attended the School of Nude at the Academy of Florence. Subsequently, he dedicates himself to engraving, a technique that he will cultivate with a certain continuity over the years, in parallel with painting. In Biancalani's painting, drawing is the protagonist, because stories unfold in its folds, as between rolls of rolled up mattresses and the sheets left on the bed, often portrayed by the artist. The human figure is central, isolated, or given by clues. Figures that become existential appearances in a tormented pictorial space, like shapes imprinted on old photographic slabs, now on the verge of disappearing, or solitary presences of flesh in their physicality. The first solo show at the Il Toro di Empoli (Fi) gallery in 1973. Soon the terms of his figurative language in the direction of critical and existential realism will be clarified. There are also numerous participations in exhibitions and the exhibition activity is getting intensifying, coinciding with the full resumption of work, at the end of the eighties, after a period of study and reflection on language that will result in a new figurative vision, based on the poetic revisitation of everyday reality, through the emblematic objects above all of the peasant culture. Numerous consents and awards have been obtained, with exhibitions throughout Italy and abroad (France, the Caribbean, the United States, Germany, Ireland, Belgium). Among his work, Dino Carlesi, Marco Cola, Enio Concarotti, Enrico Crispolti, Enzo Fabiani, Giovanni Faccenda, Mauro Falzoni, Guerrino Giorgetti, Linda Giusti, Valerio Grimaldi, Paolo Levi, Giovanni Lombardi, Nicola Micieli, Domenico Montalto, Elvio Natali, Nicola Nuti, Dino Pasquali, Alessandra Scappini. Biancalani lives and works in Lamporecchio (Pt).

ANTONIO BIANCALANI