An artist, a work, a collection – Fernanda Fedi & Gino Gini

Fernanda Fedi and Gino Gini, among the most relevant contemporary artists, also active and well-known internationally, live and work in Milan. With their respective paths of investigation into the relationship between line, word and image, they are exhibiting at the F.lli Cairoli University College in Pavia with the spring 2022 bi-exhibition (Gino Gini. On the Side of Writing, 2005-2022; Fernanda Fedi, Musical Viruses and Poetic Escapes, 2020-2022) and participate in the large group exhibition The Hidden Depth. The gaze beyond the image, organized in the fall of 2023 at the same time as the Augustinian celebrations. Gino Gini at Cairoli, however, is present as early as 1982, at the time of Marco Fraccaro’s rectorate, in the dual role of artist and organizer-coordinator of the seminal exhibition Mail Art. The mythical image. International Operation of Postal Art.

Fernanda Fedi completed her art studies between Milan and Bologna and specialized in museology, museography and art – therapy. An essayist, promoter of conferences and debates, she is also interested in the role of women artists. Three phases characterize her path: the structural period-The Crossed Line 1970-78; the conceptual period-The Thought Line-Absence 1979-82; Ecriture plastique-The Line as Tachygraphy Writing-Asemic Writing-Sign-Memory-Music since 1983. His work starts under the banner of abstract-concrete art, leading to the conception of the line as tachigraphy between asemantic writing and mnemonic-musical sensations. He has exhibited since 1968, with more than seventy solo shows; in Italy at prestigious galleries such as Fumagalli in Bergamo, Cenobio-Visualità and Centro San Fedele in Milan, Verifica 8+1 in Venice, Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Gallarate (now MAGA), Museo Attivo delle forme Inconsapevoli in Genoa Quarto; abroad at Galleria Quadrige in Nice, several times since 2000, at Artesia in Ulmiz-Berne, at Tardy in Enschede, Netherlands. Among the many exhibitions in Italy, the Quadriennale, Rome1975, the Venice Biennale Arte-Ambiente 1976, the Venice Biennales 2007 and 2011, the V Biennale Donna at Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara 1992, Poesia Visiva. Mirella Bentivoglio’s collection at MART Rovereto 2011-2012, Fondazione Berardelli Brescia 2021-22, Villa Olmo in Como 2022. Abroad he is present in Paris in 1976 and 1982, at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1981, in Washington, Moscow, China, to name but a few examples; since 2004 he has been a guest artist in Alexandria, Egypt for the exhibition dedicated to the artist’s book.

Gino Gini trained at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan; he has been exhibiting since 1968. His research since 1976 focuses in the verbo-visual sphere between word/image/writing, with a privileged attitude toward Narrative art with more poetic implications. He is considered among the main protagonists of the renewal of visual poetry. To artist’s books he devoted himself from 1976-77 and in 1983 he founded with Fernanda Fedi the Artist’s Books Archive in Milan. In 2010 he is curator, with Fedi herself, of the Fifth Biennial of Artist’s Books in Alexandria, Egypt. There are about seventy of his solo exhibitions abroad and in Italy; the most recent ones include: Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Gallarate, 2000; in Milan Gallerie Scoglio di Quarto, 2006, Miradoli, 2007, Galleria/Libreria Derbylius 2012 and 1016; in Pavia, Palazzo del Broletto, 2018; Galleria Quadrige in Nice, with 5 exhibitions between 2007 and 2011. Exhibitions include: Venice Biennale,1976, 1977, 2011; MAGI Pieve di Cento (BO) 2007, Museo della Carale in Ivrea 2008, Fondazione Cini Venice 2016; Biblioteca dei Frari in Lugano, 2018. Berardelli Foundation, Brescia, 2021-22.

Critics who have dealt with Fernanda Fedi and Gino Gini include: Bruno Munari, Silvio Zanella, Giuseppe Franzoso, Rossana Bossaglia, Germano Beringheli, Marisa Vescovo, Mauro Carrera, Elena Pontiggia, and Susanna Zatti.