Andrea Dami was born in Pistoia on 25th September 1946. He studied at Pistoia’s Istituto d’Arte Petrocchi and embarked on an art education career in 1966. In 1965 he began taking part in collective and solo exhibitions but it was in the 1990s that his exhibition work became more productive. In 1990 a solo exhibition entitled Il nastro di Arianna, critically curated by Anna Brancolini and Siliano Simoncini at Osteria dei Pellegrini in Monsummano Terme opened exhibiting papier-mâché and enamel sculptures, video sculptures and videos. It was in 1992 that his materialisations, papier-mâché and video sculpture period began and one of these was part of the collective exhibition curated in Montecatini Alta by Antonio Nespoli, Dami, Spoerri, Ulivi. Tre artisti all’est dell’America and the other, a ‘materialisation in black’ made up of four black lunettes was exhibited at Villa Renatico Martini di Monsummano Terme on the occasion of the Dodici-dodici-così exhibition, meetings with twelve plus one artists and their work. In the mid-1990s he created an equipped green space called Giardino della Memoria in Castelmartini to commemorate the Padule di Fucecchio massacre and within this space he built a large painted iron sculpture. He exhibited a series of iron ‘materialisations’ in a solo exhibition in Pietrasanta and then at the Proiezioni d’arte –Palazzo Fabroni collective at Fortezza di Santa Barbara in Pistoia. The sonorant sculptures date to the late 1990s: Sogno, Quattro Stagioni, Menhir, exhibited in Pistoia, Pisa, Perugia and at Santa Maria Novella station in Florence and L’ala dell’angelo, a sonorant sculpture in iron exhibited and sounded at the Fattoria di Celle’s theatre space in Pistoia on the occasion of Dani Karavan’s Cerimonia del tè. Subsequently the same event was re-organised in Perugia's historic Piazza IV Novembre on the occasion of the Perugia classico 99 exhibition. In 2001, on the occasion of an event commemorating the liberation of Pistoia on 8th September 1944, Andrea Dami created the graphic project for a book entitled Memoria with designs and photos. In 2003 he created the sonorant work Direzioni which, together with other work by him and those of Jaume Pensa and Armando Marrocco, breathed life into the Villa di Groppoli Giardino sonoro for which Dami also created a guide book. In 2009 he took part in a project entitled Luna e l’Altro made up of a book and three contemporary art exhibitions entitled Enigma, Archetipo and Ambiguità set up in Certaldo, Florence and Pontassieve respectively. The exhibitions commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the 20th July 1969 moon landings and presented the work of fifty artists and the same number of writers who carried out work dedicated to the moon with a range of multi-media techniques. In March 2011 at Villa Renatico Martini at the Monsummano Terme Museo d’Arte Contemporanea e del Novecento an exhibition entitled Tre colori Verde Bianco e Rosso. Tre artisti Barale - Bassetti - Dami curated by Roberto Agnoletti was held. With his work Diario Andrea Dami reminds us of the passing of time and history: it is a long synoptic table arranged over a wall on which the dates of all the most significant events representing the development of the Constitution over 150 years are marked and permits dialogue with the public who can leave post it notes attached to the wall bearing the events which have, for the audience, most characterised Italy. On 10th November 2012 Dami presented a video work entitled Riflessi liquidi dedicated to the centenary of John Cage’s birth at Villa Castello di Smilea in Montale. Riflessi Liquidi is a fusion of images, words and sounds obtained by means of musical sculptures, electronic sounds and environmental noises. Andrea Dami’s primary work is his interventions and the events he has participated in are present on the various websites in his name. The Youtube video Lavori incorso Andrea Dami at work dating to 26th March 2012 is interesting.
Anna Braccolini, who has followed Andrea Dami’s work for years, wrote Un possibile percorso di Andrea Dami which you can read or reproduce on the www.cra.phoenixfound.it website (Carla Rossi Academy - International Institute of Italian Studies). Over recent years the collection has been enriched with work presenting a graceful pictogram which represents ourselves in this risk society and this risk invites us to reflect on the era in which we live in a state of indeterminacy and unpredictability. The immobility of the butterfly in his sculpture paintings has a positive value for Andrea Dami because (bodily) rest allows for contemplation, a contemplation which can redefine our sociological concepts”. With their immobility butterflies rest on the green, white and red flag, symbol of a nation, Italy, whose 150 years of Unity leave much to reflect upon. The fusion of the colours, the black of the pole, the balanced forms, obliges us to pause to clear our minds, to attempt to understand what of this initial and much trumpeted unity has survived today. Observers cannot but get directly involved and the artist expects their active participation.
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“Andrea Dami describing an object in neo-Mannerist style”, in the words with which Umberto Castelli, curator of the 1944-94: 50 anni di Lavoro file, presents Dami’s watercolour and continues “Dami’s ‘floral wheel’ is conceived as a means by which to alleviate the daily fatigue of human work”. Is it true that observing that irregular wheel made up of a multiplicity of analogue signs reiterated with differing colour effects which call to mind an infinite number of elements from nature from the flower to the leaf to the insect can be a moment of stasis which prompts reflection? And does it not appear, from a careful observation of Dami’s watercolours with its two large wings growing out of a filiform central body, that what we are witnessing is the birth of a butterfly? From immobile but unstoppably evolving chrysalis to butterfly which pauses to think. The beauty of the maestro’s work is precisely a matter of this ability to get audiences involved and bring them into his continually evolving thought.
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The four sheets in this suite came out of a project “A tempo di gioco nell’orto di Giovannino”. ("Play Time in Johnny's Garden"). Inaugurated on 6 August 2016, Andrea Dami’s Talking Trees was installed in the Pian di Novello Art Park in the Pinaccina area. It is a series of hollow trees, inside of which an exciting range of transformative emotions are experienced, transforming participants into woodlands inhabitants. The succession of visual, tactile, auditory, and olfactory sensations is because of the artist having concentrated everything within a contained, natural area, even ready with musical instruments. I transferred these magnificent colorful sheets, which make up the suite, to an outdoor event where they are instead tasked with remembering those splendid artistic adventures when we become like children again, ready to leave our comforts to enjoy one more time the delights of that playful, fairytale world once thought lost forever.
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This work by Andrea Dami entitled Stone Fragments was previously exhibited at Mac,n exhibition in 2019. The title is from the line “Finally you were destined for my eyes", in Pablo Neruda’s poem To a Ship’s Figurehead, hinting at one of Dami’s countless conceptual and intellectual games. Rather than the seemingly innocent, inquiring eye being the center of the composition, the diagonals are the work’s foremost element. their many facets and forms move about the sheet, creating a three-dimensional, vertical prism. The densely woven numbers, signs, chiaroscuro, and shapes are quickly organized into personal routes to be redirected, modified, retouched, corrected or completely rectified at any moment. Hence, man is a perfect creature precisely because of this capability to contemplate and reconsider even his deepest convictions.
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A typical park at a Tuscan villa, with cypresses and ancient sculpture. A swimming pool separated by a hedge and a large net ready to trap the poor butterflies as they draw nearer. Having followed Andrea Dami's work for many years, Anna Brancolini has spoken about the butterfly and the importance of this delicate animal to the artist in his various exhibitions or events. She wrote, "For Andrea Dami, the butterfly’s immobility in sculpture-paintings has a redeeming merit as the relaxed (body) lets us consider redefining our sociological concepts". Perhaps this search for the butterfly man with all his good points, his beauty and composure, his insight and intuition are a utopia that the artist encourages us to seek.
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This interesting work by Andrea Dami manages to combine a landscape juxtaposing rugged rocks and linear roads and a short poem that seems to explain the pandemic tragedy that struck the world in 2020. "An extraordinary, decisive effort was about to vanquish the destructive darkness... an abiding commitment on a day that was about to enlighten us”. The change from calm to storm, from light to darkness is a condition rooted in human life that seems to have impressed the artist already as far back as 1990.
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