To mark its 50th anniversary, Galleria Susanna Orlando in Pietrasanta is honoring Giuseppe Chiari, a Florentine visual artist, musician, pianist, and composer, and a pivotal Italian figure in the Fluxus movement. Curated by Paolo Emilio Antognoli and running until June 7, 2026, the exhibition revisits the work of one of contemporary art’s most intriguing and versatile figures.
Featuring a central collection of 16 previously unseen works from a Florentine studio where the artist spent his time, the exhibition focuses on Giuseppe Chiari in direct dialogue with numerous artists and performers associated with the movement. These include founder George Maciunas, as well as Joseph Beuys, John Cage, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, and Italians Giancarlo Cardini, Gianni Melotti, and Carlo Battisti. This is not merely a retrospective but an insightful exploration of the connections between artists and ideas, entirely in the spirit of Fluxus. Derived from the Latin word for “flow,” Fluxus was a revolutionary international avant-garde movement that emerged in the early 1960s, spearheaded by theorist and artist George Maciunas. It was founded on principles of interdisciplinarity, ephemerality, anti-academism, and a playful, experimental approach, advocating a new, liberated way of experiencing art. This ethos gave rise to Happenings and Performances – individual or collective actions designed to dissolve the boundaries between artist and audience, and between art and life, emphasizing the “here and now” and site-specific, total participation. Susanna Orlando explains her inspiration: “I started with Giuseppe Chiari because I am fascinated by his playful, accessible, performative approach. I felt like having a party, which is why I chose not to exhibit him alone; I immersed myself in their reality through the research I conducted on all the works.” She adds, “I imagine him in the 1960s in Milan at the Teatro Lirico during John Cage’s concert, slowly tearing up his sheet music. I also picture him in the Florentine workshops where he loved to spend his time working. Chiari disseminated art. Chiari was an ‘artisan’ of art. A Florentine, like me. And so, with this first exhibition, I am launching the celebrations for my fifty years in business. We’re starting from Florence.”
Giuseppe Chiari (1926 – 2007) was a key figure in the interdisciplinary dialogue between visual arts, music, technology, and conceptual experimentation. With a background in engineering and later in piano, Chiari challenged traditional notions of art, forging alternative paths and redefining the artist’s role as a free researcher across disciplines. Applying a mathematical perspective to sound-producing materials and possessing a strong classical foundation – complemented by his professional collaboration with John Cage – Chiari delved into the core of music to redefine its essence. His manifestos on paper, such as “Music is easy” or “Art is easy,” transformed musical scores into open canvases for graphic and textual possibilities, rendering musical action as a collective experience of magically orchestrated sounds and silences. The exhibition design itself becomes a pervasive manifesto, meticulously crafted to create an atmosphere consistent with the artists’ ethos. It transforms the gallery space into a stage-like observatory, transporting the viewer into a profoundly experimental dimension. On the walls, Chiari’s works seem to dance, existing as a kind of work-in-progress musical score, shedding all physical weight and inhabiting the long walls in a spontaneous, improvisational manner. Scores morph into minimalist, syncopated geometric motifs, collage techniques are applied to string instruments, archival photographs are displayed, words function as tiny revolutions, and sketches and notes attest to a life lived as “Total Art.”
For the Fluxus group, every encounter was an opportunity to create art, or rather, to cultivate awareness of the artistic potential inherent in every relationship and exchange of ideas and energies. The exhibition culminates in a gallery wall display that provides a comprehensive perspective on the Fluxus movement: exhibition posters, graphics, objects from Happening events, and unique pieces are brought together, emphasizing how any object, when shaped with the right intention, can become central to the artistic process. The displayed sculptures, including a vintage bicycle and a flower, both designed as sound works to be activated mechanically, are by Carlo Battisti, an artist who blends music, action, and found objects and who previously collaborated with Chiari. “Yes We Fluxus!” celebrates the gallery’s 50 years of activity through a complete shift in perspective, placing the importance of creative relationships at the heart of the discourse as the true engine driving the history of art forward. The choice of the Fluxus movement and its members – known for their experimental and unconventional thinking – sends a clear message, almost a manifesto of intent: art exists in the measure of dialogue.
The exhibition culminates with Giuseppe Chiari’s “suitcase sculptures.” From this critical viewpoint, they transform into actual travel objects: containers from which all the works appear to have sprung, and which remain ready to enclose the exhibition once more, ready to transport it towards new creative journeys.
