The one-woman exhibition that the Uffizi Galleries is devoting to Kiki Smith.

The Uffizi Galleries are proud to host a project entitled What I Saw on the Road, the first monographic exhibition ever devoted to the work of Kiki Smith in the context of a public institution in Italy. The show is being held at the Andito degli Angiolini in Pitti Palace, a space now customarily set aside every spring for the great protagonists of art declined in the feminine.
The exhibition brings together about forty of Kiki's works, providing an exhaustive overview of her output over the past twenty years with brightly coloured jacquard cotton tapestries, fragile bronze, silver and wood sculptures and works on paper.

Laying proud claim to a place in so-called feminist art, the central and virtually exclusive theme of Kiki Smith's career until the 1990s was the body, in particular the female body in all its fragile mortality – often torn and at times even dismembered, but also heroically and proudly capable of redemption and rebellion. Kiki's more recent output, on display in this exhibition, has however broadened its horizon to take a more multi-faceted look at what goes on outside the body: What I saw on the road is what we happen to see and what interacts with our existence if we pay close attention and cast a poetic gaze on the relationship between the body and the world, between man, nature and the cosmos. To quote Eike Schmidt, Director of the Uffizi Galleries: “The extremely elegant grace of Kiki's latest works, whose often fragile and precious matter is an effective metaphor of the human – especially the female – condition, has the loftily ethical aim of recreating unity and harmony in what is so often a world of brutality and discord, unleashing a deeply revolutionary energy: hers is the vocabulary of a new, unexpected and disconcerting pietas”.

In Pitti Palace, Kiki Smith stages a splendid fairy tale of nature whose leading players are animals, onto whom we are naturally inclined to transfer our own human feelings and fears, in a tangle of groves and thickets as enchanted as they are peopled with obstacles and fantastic inhabitants of distant galaxies: “It is a contemporary cosmography useful for underscoring the organic, psychological, spiritual and imaginative continuity that knows no hierarchies among living beings and that constitutes the common backdrop against which the affairs of the entire natural universe are played out”, an invitation to reflect on the precious vulnerability of the human condition in relation to the complexity of life, adds Renata Pintus who co-curated the exhibition with Eike Schmidt.

Fortune 2014 arazzo in cotone jacquard con interventi pittorici Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Fortune 2014 cotton Jacquard tapestry and hand-painting Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions Courtesy of the artist and Pace GalleryEarth 2012 arazzo in cotone jacquard Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions  Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Earth 2012 cotton Jacquard tapestry Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions  Courtesy of the artist and Pace GalleryUnderground 2012 arazzo in cotone jacquard Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions  Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Underground 2012 cotton Jacquard tapestry Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions  Courtesy of the artist and Pace GalleryCongregation 2014 arazzo in cotone jacquard Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions  Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Congregation 2014 cotton Jacquard tapestry  Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions  Courtesy of the artist and Pace GalleryPresent 2015 alluminio con foglia d’oro I Present 2015 aluminum with gold leaf, Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery Girl 2014 figura in argento su base in bronzo Vigevano, collezione Angela Kokrhanek, Per gentile concessione della Lorcan O’Neill Gallery I Girl 2014 figure: fine silver, base: bronze Vigevano, Angela Kokrhanek collection Courtesy of Lorcan O’Neill Gallery Annunciation 2008 fusione in alluminio Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Annunciation 2008 cast bronze  Courtesy of the artist and Pace GallerySky 2012 arazzo in cotone jacquard e foglia d’oro Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Sky 2012 cotton Jacquard tapestry Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions Courtesy of the artist and Pace GalleryCathedral (Wolf) 2012, arazzo in cotone jacquard Roma, collezione Giulio di Gropello Per gentile concessione di Galleria Continua, San Gimignano - Beijing – Les Moulins – Habana I Cathedral (Wolf) 2012, cotton Jacquard tapestry Roma, Giulio di Gropello collection Courtesy of Galleria Continua, San Gimignano - Beijing – Les Moulins – HabanaSpinners 2014 arazzo in cotone jacquard con interventi pittorici e foglia d’oro Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Spinners 2014 cotton Jacquard tapestry, hand-painting and gold leaf Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions Courtesy of the artist and Pace GalleryGoat Moth and Turkey Tails 2016 bronzo Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Kiki Smith Goat Moth and Turkey Tails 2016 bronze Courtesy of the artist and Pace GalleryDeliver 2015 compensato giapponese intagliato a laser e dipinto Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Deliver 2015 hand painted laser cut shina plywood Courtesy of the artist and Pace GalleryOwl 1998 silicone e bronzo fosforoso Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Owl 1998 silicon and phosphorous bronze Courtesy of the artist and Pace GallerySojourn 2015 arazzo in cotone jacquard Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Sojourn 2015 cotton Jacquard tapestry Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions Courtesy of the artist and Pace GalleryHarbor 2015 arazzo in cotone jacquard e foglia d’oro Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions Per gentile concessione dell’artista e della Pace Gallery I Harbor 2015 cotton Jacquard tapestry and gold leaf Oakland, California, Magnolia Editions Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery
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Information

Exhibition venue

Andito degli Angiolini, Pitti Palace

16 February – 2 June 2019

Opening hours

Tueday – Sunday

8.15 am – 6.50 pm (last entrance to the exhibition 6.30pm)

Closed on Monday

 

Education service for schools                           

Guided tours for school groups by appointment only. Price € 3.00 per student.

For further information and reservations: Firenze Musei +39.055.294883

 

Guided tour service

For further information and reservations: Firenze Musei +39.055.290383

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The exhibition is included in the admission ticket to the museums of Pitti Palace info