PASSEGGIATA TABUCCHI 1
A WALK WITH TABUCCHI 1
Spazio Culturale Antonio Tabucchi
The Antonio Tabucchi cultural area is located on a former sports field and it is in the heart of the village, near Piazza Garibaldi. It was dedicated to the writer on 18 April 2012 and it is the meeting point for the Vecchiano residents.
In the following years, this space has been enhanced with some exhibits dedicated to the writer, under the initiative of the Administration of the Mayor Angori.
The first, in order of time, is an exhibit panel entitled "Un ricordo di Antonio. La vita non è in ordine alfabetico”, organized by the Antonio Tabucchi Cultural Society.
This exhibit was followed by two works shortly after: a painting, entitled “Domani presto o tardi” by the artist Alessandro Tofanelli and a sculpture entitled “Omaggio alla scrittura” by Gianni Lucchesi.
The five large-scale panels, inaugurated on 10 October 2020, retrace significant moments of the author’s life and work through photographs and short texts.
The first panel, a biographical work, underlines the importance of Tabucchi in the 20th-century literary panorama and highlights not only the activity of the writer but also that of scholar, critic, and translator, as well as his civic commitment.
The second panel shows a unique portrait of the author realized through the eyes of the students of the Leopardi Scuola media of Vecchiano during a European project about the travel theme in Tabucchi's fiction.
The third panel provides a definition of what literature is for Tabucchi while the fourth panel, which gives the title to the whole exhibit through a quotation from the novel Tristano muore (2012), emphasizes the deep bond with the writer Pessoa.
Finally, the fifth panel evokes the emotional relationship of Tabucchi with his country through some photos of the village of Vecchiano in the ‘40s and the words of his first novel Piazza d’Italia, set in Vecchiano. According to Tabucchi, Vecchiano is a point of departure and a place of constant return.
The second work, a large canvas, inaugurated on 26 March 2021, was created by the painter Alessandro Tofanelli. It is the expression of the dialogue which can be established among the different forms of art. It represents the connection between the imaginative fiction of Tabucchi and the pictorial creativity of Tofanelli (as the critic and art historian Giovanni Faccenda remarked).
Tabucchi’s love for art emerges both in his work and in his biography: since he was a child, his uncle would take him to visit the masterpieces of the great Florentine museums.
In a sort of game of mirrors and allusions, this canvas is freely inspired by the story “Finestra sull’ignoto” from the collection Racconti con figure (2011), also inspired by a painting by Tofanelli “Presto o tardi” (2008).
The third installation, inaugurated on 29 July 2021, is a sculpture made by Gianni Lucchesi. The artist wanted to create a work that would unconventionally celebrate the writer, making us reflect on the very meaning of writing.
Since the cultural space occupies a ground previously intended for a football field, Lucchesi has created a long banner that can be read from far away or by those who simply pass by this place. The sentence draws attention to the committed aspect of Tabucchi’s writing, which has always been a careful critical conscience of his time and a defender of the values of freedom and democracy.
They are corten steel stripes from which the letters that made up the writing, were cut out as a negative. The cut-out letters have been then assembled, one on top of the other, to form a small totem, as if that thought in support of the small human figure that is there, materialized.
(Traduzione di Alessia Isaia)