Glenn Brown: Piaceri Sconosciuti: Museo Stefano Bardini, Florence

The Stefano Bardini Museum is thrilled to announce a major exhibition by Glenn Brown, from 12^th June to 26^th October.  Mining art history and popular culture, Glenn Brown has created an artistic language that transcends time and pictorial conventions.  His mannerist impulses stem from a desire to breathe new life into the extremities of historical form. Through reference, appropriation, and investigation, he presents a contemporary reading of images new and remembered.  Borrowed figures and landscapes are subjected to a thoughtful and extended process of development in which they gradually transform into compelling, exuberant entities. In sophisticated compositions that fuse diverse histories—the Renaissance, Impressionism, Surrealism—Brown creates a space where the abstract and the visceral, the rational and irrational, the beautiful and grotesque, churn in a dizzying amalgamation of reference and form.

Born in Hexham, England, Glenn Brown has been featured in numerous group and solo museum exhibitions.  Recent solo shows include Glenn Brown, Tate Liverpool, England (2009, traveled to Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy; and Museum Ludwig, Budapest, through 2010); Conversation Piece V, Frans Hals Museum, The Netherlands (2013–14); Glenn Brown, Des Moines Art Center, Iowa (2016, traveled to Contemporary Arts Center, Cinncinatti, through 2017); Glenn Brown/Vincent Van Gogh, Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles, France (2016) and most recently Glenn Brown – Rembrandt; Afterlife, Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam (2017).

The presence of the work of Glenn Brown in Florence confirms the leading position of the city in promoting contemporary art.  Placing Brown’s work alongside the renowned collection of Stefano Bardini, the hugely influential art dealer and collector of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, will allow the public to view significant visual art being produced today by a leading artist, alongside works of the past creating a captivating juxtaposition and renewed discourse.  The Bardini Museum houses several medieval and renaissance masterpieces, including Charity by Tino da Camaino, and the Madonna of the Cordai by Donatello, as well as monumental paintings such as the Crucifix by Bernardo Daddi, St. Michael the Archangel by Pollaiolo, Atlas by Guercino and a series of breath-taking drawings by Tiepolo and Piazzetta.  Glenn Brown will be installing over twenty works, including paintings, drawings and sculptures – some of which are shown for the first time and that were made specifically on occasion of this exhibition.