OUR
STORY
Fornaciai Art Gallery is located at 53/r Borgo San Jacopo, in the heart of Florence's historic center, just a short distance from Ponte Vecchio, Palazzo Pitti, and Via Maggio, the famous street of antique dealers. The current name of the gallery was chosen at the end of 2017 to pay homage to its founder, Piero Fornaciai, who in December 1956 inaugurated the historic Tornabuoni Gallery at number 74 Via Tornabuoni, which in the early 2000s moved to its current location in Borgo San Jacopo. Fornaciai Art Gallery wanted to seal its perfect continuity with its tradition and past with the family name, drawing on over half a century of presence in the Italian and international modern and contemporary art market, which began more than sixty years ago with Piero Fornaciai and is now continued by his son Fabio and grandson Gregorio.
Since its beginnings, the Gallery has proven to be an interesting exhibition space within the city's artistic and cultural scene. In a short period of time, it specialized in authorial painting and graphics, showcasing in Florence some of the most valuable prints and paintings by renowned Italian and international masters who are universally recognized in the art world. Notable exhibitions include those dedicated to Giuseppe Capogrossi, Georges Braque, René Magritte, as well as Marino Marini, Filippo De Pisis, Mario Sironi, Sergio Sarri, and Zao Wou-Ki.
In the early 1960s and throughout the following decade, the Gallery, leveraging its experience in the art market, began to develop a continuous commercial activity in the United States alongside its presence in Florence. It exhibited and sold its collections in major American department stores, in cities on the East Coast such as Pittsburgh, Richmond, and Atlanta, as well as in inland cities like St. Louis, Omaha, Denver, and Houston. These events were part of exhibitions dedicated to Made in Italy, with evocative titles such as «… a salute to Italian art», «Italia Fantastica», and «Italia Magnifica».
Among the artists introduced to the American audience were some of the most prominent figures of Italian art of the post-World War II period: Massimo Campigli, Carlo Carrà, Alberto Magnelli, Gino Severini, Renato Guttuso, Mario Tozzi, and Aligi Sassu. The exhibitions also featured some of the most popular Italian art movements of the time, from Renzo Vespignani’s neo-figurative style to Bruno Cassinari’s post-expressionism.
Graphic works by artists close to the Milanese spatial movement, such as Roberto Crippa, Gianni Dova, and Emilio Scanavino, were also present, along with works by younger generations like abstract artists Arturo Carmassi and Gianni Bertini. The exhibitions also included works by Florentine artists such as Vinicio Berti, Gualtiero Nativi, Antonio Bueno, Riccardo Guarneri, and Paolo Masi.
Fabio Fornaciai, the current head of the Gallery, took over in the early 1980s with enthusiasm and initiative, continuing to present to the public artists who have now become fully part of art history, while also showing interest in emerging new artists. In 1999, Fabio opened an additional exhibition space in Pietrasanta with a solo show by Franz Borghese. On December 2, 2004, the Gallery received the prestigious “Fiorino d’Oro” award during the XXII Premio Firenze, in recognition of its fifty years of activity. The sixty years of the Gallery’s operation were celebrated with an exhibition dedicated to «Italian artists from the post-World War II period to the 1960s at the Tornabuoni Gallery», as a tribute to “Piero Fornaciai, Florentine gallerist”
Currently, the Fornaciai Art Gallery collaborates with some important art centers and cultural institutions, including the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at the University of Florence, where Fabio Fornaciai has taught courses in Art Management. The gallery continues its exhibition activities by organizing shows of both established and contemporary artists, promoting the artistic production of young and very young generations.