Luigi Serafini

The book retraces the creative journey of the artist Luigi Serafini by defining the origins of his relationship with the publisher Franco Maria Ricci and is illustrated with works from Luigi Serafini's archive and the Franco Maria Ricci Foundation's art and book collection, including the famous Codex Seraphinianus.

The volume Luigi Serafini is an excellent compendium to the exhibition scheduled at the Labirinto della Masone from March 29. Widely illustrated with the artist's multifaceted paintings and sculptures, some of which, like the Codex Seraphinianus plates, are already known, others unpublished, the book includes three chapters, written by Pietro Mercogliano, arranged to compose a “backward” biography of the artist. Moving through time and space, the text restores an artistic trajectory that is always unpredictable and multifaceted as well as the traces of the strange and brilliant world imagined by the artist. Thus, the book presents a network of cross-references and allusions, of ironic and self-deprecating quotations, of jokes and mental pitfalls, of glimpses and winks, of leaps, digs, and glares, which manifest themselves as much in words as in images. In the opening, the introduction by Labirinto della Masone director Edoardo Pepino will focus on the link between Serafini and Franco Maria Ricci, the first editor of his best-known work, the Codex Seraphinianus.