Pisa, Road Festival returns: exhibitions, workshops and new murals for street art event

From Oct. 27, 2023 to Jan. 7, 2024, Pisa will once again become the capital ofurban art with the Festival della Strada, conceived by Gian Guido Grassi with the Start Attitude association and promoted by the Palazzo Blu Foundation and the Pisa Foundation. The festival includes exhibitions, diffuse installations, talks, workshops and the creation of new murals, with contributions from the Council of the Region of Tuscany and the City of Pisa.

In dialogue with the exhibition Le Avanguardie, running until April 7, 2024, Palazzo Blu is hosting two exhibitions as part of the Festival della Strada: Brazilian Eduardo Kobra creates a contemporary School of Athens in the Library Room, drawing from the portraits of the Avant-gardists; 108, Moneyless, Etnik, Zed1, Aris, Gio Pistone, and Massimo Sospetto reinterpret the Bauhaus style in the palace’s noble dwelling through a collective of applied art.

In parallel, also on the Lungarno Gambacorti, the Chiesa della Spina hosts the installation Non Plus Ultra by Gonzalo Borondo, a Spanish artist born in 1989. Thirty-five printed glass plates on each of which two graphic pictorial images can be seen: a column and a figure from behind with outstretched arms, meant to refer to the iconography of the crucifixion. A transparent labyrinth of signs and symbols to reflect on the concept of limit, on its negation, on man’s sacred need to cross the threshold of the known and of logic, to overcome himself and project himself into infinity.

Thanks also to the contribution of the Council of the Region of Tuscany, during the period of the Road Festival many of the artists involved in the temporary exhibitions will also be involved in the creation of new murals in the Porta a Mare neighborhood.

“The Festival della Strada will transform Pisa into the Italian capital of street art,” said Antonio Mazzeo, president of the Regional Council. “I would like to thank the Start association for organizing this important event in which internationally renowned artists will participate. Street art for its artistic value and at the same time for its strong social repercussions deserves more and more attention from our institutions, so much so that as the Regional Council we have invested a lot in it with the call Ri-Generazione Toscana and with a regional law with which we have directly financed some works that will soon see the light in Pisa and Lucca as well. Street art also has the unique characteristic of bringing art into people’s daily lives, you don’t need to go to a museum to admire it, it manages to make our neighborhoods more beautiful every day.”

“It is interesting how Eduardo Kobra’s work complements the avant-garde exhibition currently underway,” added Cosimo Bracci Torsi, president of the Palazzo Blu Foundation. “Looking around we can see portraits of many of the protagonists of 20th century painting, as well as reinterpretations of some of their most famous works. There is Duchamp’s Mona Lisa, and then there are Picasso, Chagall, Dali and Mondrian, the latter of whom is on display right now at Palazzo Blu. A beautiful integration for The Vanguards, and a way of promoting urban art, which is increasingly present within cultural institutions and increasingly important.”

“I made eight panels that reread the works of the geniuses portrayed in this large mural,” street artist Kobra. “The largest panel is painted on a support of vinyl material, while the others are paintings on canvas. My main work is making murals, I have done murals in 36 countries and this will be the fifth one I do in Italy.”

“My installation was born at the MACRO in Rome with the intention of being a work that, thanks to the play of reflections and transparency, can dialogue with different contexts,” explained Gonzalo Borondo. "I had never wanted to exhibit it inside a church, but when I saw the Church of the Thorn I realized that it could be the right place because of its chromatics, its architecture. It is an honor to relate my work to this artistic jewel. Non Plus Ultra invites one to enter a dimension of tension generated by the large sheets of glass that compose it: the fragility of the material puts one in awe, in contrast to the size and strength of the structure. I like to foster in the audience a desire to go further, curiosity, and to trigger a reflection on how much this tendency is part of us."

For more information, visit www.palazzoblu.it

Hours: Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. (last admission 6 p.m.); Saturday, Sunday and holidays 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (last admission 7 p.m.)

Pisa, Road Festival returns: exhibitions, workshops and new murals for street art event

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