"Flower Up" by Emiliano Ponzi
Emiliano Ponzi – famous for his conceptual, clear and refined style – is one of the most appreciated, recognized and awarded Italian illustrators in the world. Indeed, paradoxically, he was discovered and appreciated first in the United States than in Italy. Thanks to a mix of luck and audacity, Emiliano Ponzi created his first important work as an illustrator in 2004 for the New York Times, to which we owe his revelation. From that moment on, his career is an escalation of increasingly significant and international recognitions, awards and projects.
Since 2019, he has been the art director responsible for the image of the Pensavo Peccioli festival for all its editions. Furthermore, from March 2023 to January 2024, Palazzo Senza Tempo hosted Anthologica, an anthological “summary” of the artist’s work, curated by Federica Cano Correa and Stefano Cipolla, art director of L’Espresso.
From this long collaboration came the idea of hosting some of his works in Peccioli. The first is “FLOWER UP“, an artistic installation presented at the Fuorisalone 2024 at the Brera design district, which the artist decided to donate to Peccioli.
Flower Up is composed of a large sculpture in iron and steel, the abstraction of a flower and its being in progress.
The visual wants to represent a wish. That of sowing sharing because sharing is the best way to develop empathy. No matter what the circumstance, you will still come out a little more human. Finding yourself amazed under a triumph of colors and shapes, designed for the purpose of finding yourself in a common feeling. Flower up is a call to action, from a petal to a multitude capable of contaminating each other in a positive dance.
The work was produced by Glo and curated by Cristiano Seganfreddo and is a further stage of the large itinerant artistic project “glo for art”, a format created to support art, encouraging a process of democratization of the artistic experience. Each work is then given free of charge to an institution as a gift so that it can be exhibited and disseminate art in its many forms.
“We chose Peccioli for the bond I have with the territory, with its wonderful inhabitants and with the incredible artistic and cultural operations that have made it a unique center of excellence in Italy. The work will be part of the important collection of MACCA, the Open-Air Museum of Contemporary Art”.
