
While walking through Florence I noticed a poster with a reproduction of a painting by Gerhard Richter for an exhibition at the Villa Bardini with the intriguing title Utopias and Reality. From Le Corbusier to Gerhard Richter. Since I had some time to spare I thought I’d include it in my itinerary. I’m glad I did. It’s a fascinating exhibition and I even ended up buying the catalogue.
Through painting, sculpture, photography, video and contemporary music, the exhibition showcases how artists have imagined the city in the 20th and 21st century. The exhibition includes more than 120 works by a large number of modern and contemporary artists and architects, from Giorgio de Chirico and Le Corbusier to Daido Moriyama, Wolfgang Tillmans, Christo and Daniel Libeskind. The majority of artists in the exhibition are Italian, which had the added benefit for me that I hadn’t heard of them before.
The exhibition is divided into twelve sections, from the desired city and the hostile city to urban signs, utopias and the metropolis. Each room is enhanced by quotes from authors and philosophers such as Walter Benjamin, Italo Calvino, Marguerite Yourcenar and Jorge-Luis Borges. The curators also included a compilation of city scenes from a number of popular films, which reminded me of a course about cinema and the city that the AA School or Architecture once offered.
Apart from some works by Soll LeWitt, Rem Koolhaas, Archigram and Paul Citroen, most of the works in the exhibition were new to me. I was delighted to hear Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna and Roberto Leydi’s audio portrait of Milan, originally created in 1955.
Villa Bardini and the surrounding Giardino Bardini, perched on a hill on the left bank of the Arno, offers breathtaking views of Florence. It was a nice touch by the curators to include two windows of the Villa Bardini into the exhibition. This is also how I learned that, while I was inside, it had started pouring with rain. So unfortunately I didn’t get to enjoy the panoramic view from the terrace of the Villa Bardini and to take some pictures of Florence and the Bardini gardens.
OltreCittà. Utopias and Reality. From Le Corbusier to Gerhard Richter is at the Villa Bardini, Florence through 19 January 2025.

