Borgo Museo | Sculture 1976 – 2004
Biography
Pirzio, aka Elio Fiore, was born in 1920 in Florence into a family that passed on to him the ancient Florentine traditions, traditions that will remain deeply rooted in him and will accompany him throughout his life. After six years in captivity captured by the Germans, he promises to dedicate his life to his passion: painting. He opens an artist studio in 1947 in the center of Florence, which Florence needed. Few artists had dedicated themselves to art due to the very complicated historical period and for this reason the opening of this studio was an incredible rebirth for the capital. In 1957 he opened an association together with his colleague, Romoli, called Torre D’Arnolfo, used to build a new building for exhibitions for artists. He will give them so much visibility that they could, in 1958, be received by Pablo Picasso in Cannes. In the mid-80s he makes a decision: he renounces his beloved Florence, well aware that the possibility of being seen and appreciated is precluded but he lives only for his art and, always convinced that the client is looking for the Artist and must not be vice versa , he moved first to Versilia, too “bourgeois”, then to the Tuscan countryside where he finally found silence, nature, until 2001, the date of his death.
Philosophy
During his life Pirzio changed many types of painting: he devoted himself completely to his profession in the post-war period and after some traces left by the war and imprinted on the canvas with only the grey color, he engages in experiments, paints still lifes, compositions, interiors of his studio, landscapes; he declares himself a craftsman of art. He deals with material compositions; assemblages of random neighbourhoods, of objects treated with a brushstroke full of colour. From the beginning of the 1970s Pirzio almost became a fashion painter, but the commissioned portrait binds the artist’s hand like the convict’s chain, so he dedicates himself to the search for primary materials including iron slag: he assembles the small pieces and obtains shapes, models to then paint on canvas. He expresses faces by charging them with all the feelings that can afflict man and reproduces the calm of seascapes, as if he wanted to relax with thoughts related to oblivion and loneliness. After a period linked to sculpture, which allows him to communicate his feelings more directly, he dedicated himself to Desco, understood by him as the most natural encounter between “Men of All Time”. The Composition of the Desco is always reduced to the essential: two figures, be they a couple or two friends seated at a table on which we find a frugal table, an apple, always symbolic, with two plates waiting to be filled, or a piece of bread or a bunch of grapes: in the Convivio an oil on canvas of 5 meters, the table is even half empty: Jesus seated in front of his, turns his back on the observer and the diners are “Men of Forever” among the such as the Artist who portrays himself with his daughter intent on handing him a piece of bread.
Artwork in Castagno
Pirzio’s work Figura (Figure) is a sculpture made up of two rocks, one on top of the other, which gives an idea of composure and realism. Consistent with the style affirmed by the artist, it reflects his personality and his ideals. The matter is not of primary importance, for him it is important to sculpt. Here too is the indelible cut challenges him and brings him to direct confrontation with the material.