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Giampaolo Talani was born in San Vincenzo (LI) in 1955.
After attending Art School in Lucca and in Florence he went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence where he met Goffredo Trovarelli as his teacher.
Throughout his studies he experimented with all art classical techniques but finally he chose painting, he also devoted himself to the fresco technique in which he is one of the greatest contemporary experts.
Talani has later succeeded also in creating works in bronze in which ones he displaces his widely explored three-dimensional figurative icons: the sailor, the departing man, the man who travels the sea, the fish finder.
In his curriculum since the early '80s - '90s some important solo exhibitions have appeared in selected art galleries, both in Italy and abroad and significant exhibitions, often anthological exhibitions, took place in public places.
However, beyond private clients and his personal artistic and poetic research, we want to emphasize the great impetus which Talani has given to the so called "Public Art" through the creation of works of undisputed and shared emotional impact, works placed in direct contact with people in public spaces of large attendance.
He started with the panels, painted for the interior staircase of the Municipality in San Vincenzo, presented in 2002 by Vittorio Sgarbi, and he got to "DEPARTURES", the fresco which in 2006 was located in the railway station "Santa Maria Novella" in Florence, a work that perfectly fits into Michelucci's great rationalist architecture.
The fresco is being acquired by the city of Florence, which in 2008 hosted his major retrospective in Palazzo Vecchio "Rosa dei Venti".
At the same time a 3 mt. high bronze statue, bearing the same name, was placed under the Loggia of the Uffizi. He was the creator and protagonist for RAI RETE I of the television romance broadcast "Rosa dei Venti - The Island that there is", aired in December 2009 and deliberately inserted after the news TGI, so that it could balance a poetic and cultural moment against the often brutal reality of the news.
Taking up the title of the successful RAI transmission, the public exhibition, held in 2010 in the picturesque setting of the square next to the cathedral in Pietrasanta, was named "The island that there is"; it aroused a strong fascination thanks to the exhibition of paintings and sculptures never seen before, recreating the distinctive poetic world of the Tuscan master. Still within in the institutional sphere there's the painting "THE HEROS SHADOW", dedicated to the figure of Giuseppe Garibaldi.
For this work dedicated to the Hero of Two Worlds, the master Talani was received by the President Giorgio Napolitano, who wanted to place the artist 's work in the Pinacoteca of Quirinale, while the work that recalls the great Italian Risorgimento, entitled "THOUSAND MEN" is exhibited in the Museum of the Risorgimento in the "Victorian" in Rome.
On the occasion of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, on commission of the organizing Committee Talani produced GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI's bust in two copies, one of which is placed in the Quirinale and the other in the Senate at Palazzo Madama, This vocation to the "public" of the artist's works is not limited to Italy. Talani was in fact the only foreign artist to be invited by the Berlin Parliament to open the celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall with the installation of "DIE MAUER-UMBRELLAS OF FREEDOM".
Among the other "public" works we remember the 7m. high bronze sculpture "The Sailor", dated 2010, located at the entrance of the tourist harbor of San Vincenzo.
A 20 meters high replica of the same sailor is being planned for the port in Miami Fla., in order to commemorate the great Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci. The railway station in Venice "Saint Lucia" will welcome on its premises the 3 mt. high bronze statue "Rosa dei Venti" as a symbol of the Venetian port, while another project dedicated to Giglio Island is being studied.
Master Talani 's works can be found in both public and private prestigious collections. For some time now Talani has being collaborated with selected Italian and foreign galleries. About him it has been written by, among others, Mario Bucci, Tommaso Paloscia, Nicola Micieli, Domenico Guzzi, Giovanni Faccenda, Vittorio Sgarbi, Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco, Maurizia Tazartes, Maria Cristina Acidini, Elisa Gradi, Sandra Nava, Umberto Cecchi, Luigi Ravaioli, Maurizio Vanni, Marco Moretti, Pier Francesco Listri, Fabio Canessa, Francesco Festuccia, Riccardo Ferrucci, Laura Farina, Silvano Granchi, Among its major holdings should be mentioned the one at the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
Maestro Giampaolo Talani has been assigned the task to open the series of Berlin events celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of Berlin Wall's Fall, from 23th to 27th June 2009, with his installation Berlin beyond the wall. The umbrellas of freedom.
On this event, the artist will have about a hundred white and-blue-striped beach umbrellas "flying" beyond the East Side Gallery, the 1300-meter-stretch of the old wall; by now, a real piece of history, entirely painted by artists from all the world. Umbrellas "will rise" from the bust of a big statue of a sailor situated in the centre of the square crossing the wall line, by the Sprea Berlin river.
Berlin authorities have decided to guest Talanits installation on the twentieth anniversary of Berlin Wall's Fall after understanding the acute metaphor of the idea of freedom in 2008, when Talani, with a gentle "madness", greeted Florence and the inauguration of his solo show at Palazzo Vecchio, by his "colourful" idea of blue-and-white beach umbrellas forming a lily on the ground of one of the most admired Italian squares: Piazza Signoria.
On that same day, a bronze statue of Maestro Talani was placed under the Loggiato degli Uffizi.
Umbrellas are recurring symbols in Giampaolo Talani's art. To the artist, born at the seaside and intimately close to its shore-line and to the wind blowing along its coast. They are thoughts flying away with our soul, who can tell where, taken by the wind of life.
They are, first and foremost, silent and gentle witnesses of human fragility. They are familiar and romantic objects which do not bring freedom but rather prefer to fly free wherever they like; they do not shout, they whisper delicate thoughts.
They help us to remember that, eventually, everything will be taken away by a blow of wind. Talani says: "The wind often gets mixed up and makes not only umbrellas, but also men, fly from one side to the other of a wall. Actually, umbrellas and men are not so different from each other.
Think about it: they both have a skeleton, joints and arms opening and closing and they're both covered with colour material. It's easy to confuse them! Moreover, the wind has no eyes. It is just a deep and quick breath.
Umbrellas are not touched by the ideas of freedom or prison. Men are always the only ones who must choose which umbrellas they should catch and hold tight. When the wind comes to take them away.." Berlin has fully caught the strong metaphysical meaning of Talani's umbrellas, and has decided to linked them to what is mostly metaphysical about the city, the latest fragment of the wall, by now, the biggest outdoor art gallery: the East Side Gallery.
From the wall, umbrellas will fly again, witnesses of an ideal relay joining the places where man first denied freedom to himself, which he would regain later on; places where human fragility has revealed itself the most, Which we should never confuse with weakness, but recognize as a real added value of man.
