Mamma Andersson in 'The Inevitable Figuration'

Mamma Andersson features in the group exhibition 'The Inevitable Figuration: A Scene of Painting Today' at The Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato, on the threshold of its twenty-fifth anniversary.

It is offering the public a new "genre" exhibition devoted entirely to the current practice of painting, picking up again a line of research pursued in its earliest years, when the developments in art in the sense of spatiality were investigated through installations, as well as those in photography, considered to be by full rights a contemporary art form.

This interest in painting could be seen as a return to the past, to the great tradition of which Tuscany was the "cradle," and in which Prato can boast of fundamental examples such as Filippo Lippi. Truth be told, contemporary artists have never stopped thinking about and practicing painting, but rather have expanded its range of action, experimenting with techniques and languages tied to the evolution of the contemporary world. In the course of the past century, the practice of painting went so far as to the reduce the "picture" to a pure, concrete, autonomous form.

Today we live in the age of images, and painters are perfectly aware of this; we have before us an authentic cultural revolution, centered around digital technology and computer networks, communication and virtual reality. As a result the practice of art, which for centuries represented and reproduced our world, cannot help pointing in the direction of The inevitable Figuration, as the intriguing title of this show indicates, presenting to us a scene of painting today. Even within the obvious limitations of a temporary exhibition, it confirms the role of artists as "sensors" of the changes taking place and reinforces the function of the museum as a stimulus to look at and meet the challenges of the present. We express our sincere gratitude to the Province of Prato, which sponsored this event, and to the Region of Tuscany, which co-financed it as part of its project "Toscanaincontemporanea2012," creating, together with the City of Prato, real area-wide synergy around the museum of contemporary art. This appears to us to be the best possible premise for the definitive development of the Pecci Center in the direction of a great museum devoted to the art and creativity of the most recent decades in Tuscany, with ambitions and interests on the national and international levels.

The exhibition has been curated by Marco Bazzini and David Ferri.