EQUILIBRIUM
Arcturus and Sun i cavalli volanti by Antonio Signorini in Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa curated by Guido Curto
On Thursday 15 May 2025 at 11:00 a.m., at the Auditorium of the Opera della Primaziale Pisana in Piazza Arcivescovado, there will be a presentation conference followed by a preview at 5:30 p.m. of the works set up alongside the Baptistery.
From 15 May to 31 August 2025, the Opera della Primaziale Pisana is promoting the installation of two monumental sculptures by Antonio Signorini, curated by Guido Curto.
The desire to host the two works in Piazza dei Miracoli is part of a path that the Opera Primaziale Pisana has been pursuing for some time: to promote an authentic dialogue between contemporary art and the historical-artistic heritage, creating a new open and dynamic narrative. The choice of Signorini stemmed mainly from two motivations: his international recognition, already witnessed by exhibitions in cities such as Venice, Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, Dubai and London, and the desire to host Signorini's first exhibition in Pisa, his hometown.
Antonio Signorini lives in Dubai but carries his city in his heart. The meeting with the fabrication that manages the Pisa Cathedral complex brought the Tuscan sculptor, whose works are in important public and private collections, to his hometown for the first time. His art manifests itself in the most absolute place and space in Pisa: the metaphysical Piazza dei Miracoli.
The two flying horses, Arcturus and Sun, two monumental bronzes of eleven metres each, are thus an extraordinary and emotionally charged event for the artist who, in this installation, unites his love for horses, born while living his childhood in the city, and that for Piazza del Duomo, where he played as a boy. With an elegant stride, a flight over the world's most famous square, the two gigantic, soaring bronze horses seem to have descended from the sky to touch down on the lawn just long enough to land and then soar off again towards a new journey.
Inspired by cave paintings and graffiti in the Altamira and Lascaux caves, the two hieratic horses vibrate within that strong and essential stylisation, as if suspended in mid-air, poised (hence the title of the installation) on their front legs with their hooves driven into the ground (but, mind you, hidden beneath the grass, there is a solid supporting base, an extraordinary piece of engineering created by the artist). This poetic, and specifically equestrian, iconology takes its cue from the great passion for horses that Signorini had developed from a young age in his father's thoroughbred racing herd, when observing and admiring those muscular, but also supple bodies thrown into unbridled flight, he was fascinated and amazed by that long moment of suspension in mid-air as they were thrown into a six or even eight metre gallop.
Flight, a key word, which Signorini rightly believes inspired the beautiful myth of Pegasus in ancient Greek civilisation. The winged horse, born when Perseus cut Medusa's neck, or, according to another version, the horse that jumped out of the neck of that monstrous and terrifying creature. In any case, a supernatural horse whose hooves were able to make springs of pure water gush forth. We do not know if we will find a spring in Piazza dei Miracoli, what is certain is that that wild and free animal is a beautiful symbol for the city of Pisa, all the more so in such a sacredly emblematic place, the place of miracles that even Art knows how to perform. All the more so if we match that precarious balancing position of the two horses with the unbalance of the Leaning Tower that stands opposite.
Moreover, there is the theme of travel in Signorini's equestrian image. Those journeys that he loves so much and that have taken him away from Italy, to London, to Paris to Lascaux to Altamura and then to Gibraltar, for example, where he carried out archaeological excavations in the footsteps of the Neanderthal man, and then recently to work in the Arab Emirates, where his horses have been so successful that they have been exhibited in numerous public places.
Arcturus and Sun, subtle, majestic and sacred, have other emblematic references in them. The sculptor has constructed them to place them in our time, and to make a journey that is far from over. A journey that leads back to the suggestion of that extraordinary work that is the Evening Shadow, an emblematic Etruscan anonymous masterpiece preserved in the Guarnacci Museum in Volterra. And that threadlike, slender being, that linear rhythm in the exploration of figures in space, is Signorini's citation to the stylistic research aimed at transfiguring the image that was Amedeo Modigliani's from Livorno. And again, as with Matisse, Antonio Signorini focuses on the synthesisation of forms, on the increasingly pushed stylisation that reduces figures to essential lines.
Signorini's last characteristic, the most difficult to grasp at first sight, is sound. Yes, because what fascinated him as a child was precisely the sound of hooves beating rhythmically on the ground when animals were galloping. Horses that land on their front legs, then immediately start off again with momentum, and never stop, dynamically, just like Signorini, an enthusiastic artist of life who communicates positive energy, endowed with an elan vitality that is well expressed in the running horse; mind you, not in the usual prancing horse typical of nineteenth-century celebratory sculptures (the one that art historians are more used to describing, which is in fact the emblem of the proterity of Power)..
Thus, the two Horses in Equilibrium become here in Pisa the emblem of a proud and free citizenship, that of the ancient and famous Maritime Republic, small but very powerful in its stubborn will to defend freedom and civil rights and in its commitment to grow and relaunch itself ever further, beyond the obstacle, without ever tiring.
The emblem of the flight and the journey of Arcturus and Sun ideally meet all those who enter this square every day to grasp spirituality, art, beauty and harmony, they too are here to make a journey and take flight after witnessing their belonging to the entire world in a place that has embraced human universality for millennia.
The dialogue between the Fabbriceria and contemporary art has been structured for a long time. The piazza with its monumental complex has hosted artists and master sculptors who have exhibited their works in these extraordinary spaces, such as Arnaldo Pomodoro, Igor Mitoraj, Giuliano Vangi, Greg Wyatt, Giuseppe Bartolini, Francesco Barbieri and Gianni Lucchesi. A dialogue whose intent remains that of creating an unprecedented aesthetic experience, in which the ancient and the new exalt each other. For Antonio Signorini, the choice was based on two reasons: that of giving space to an international artist recognised for his value in many countries of the world, and an even more special reason: to host his works for the first time in his home town. Pisa, once a forge of visions and artistic expressions, renews its ancient vocation by looking at contemporary art.
