By Camilla Sarra. Cover image Lorenzo Bonechi, La Pergola, 1992 Collezione Privata – Museo Novecento, Firenze courtesy
As Autumn approaches, Museo Novecento in Florence becomes the gateway to a world suspended between the sacred and the real. Seventy years after the birth of Lorenzo Bonechi— a painter, poet, and visionary from Figline Valdarno—his art takes center stage in a captivating exhibition titled The City of Women. Running through October 29, the show marks a rare chance to dive into the luminous, mystical imagination of one of Tuscany’s most quietly revolutionary artists.
Curated by Sergio Risaliti and Eva Francioli, in collaboration with the Lorenzo Bonechi Archive, the exhibition brings together 25 spellbinding works, displayed in dialogue with the museum’s permanent collection. This isn’t just a retrospective—it’s an experience designed to start conversations across time, space, and spirit.
How Lorenzo Bonechi Transformed 1980s Italian Art into Spiritual Masterpieces
Bonechi emerged on the Italian art scene in the late 1970s, part of the same vibrant movement that gave rise to the Transavanguardia. But while others leaned into irony or chaos, Bonechi was after something else entirely. His practice began with drawing—his first love—and slowly expanded into engraving, sculpture, and finally painting. By 1982, he was working almost exclusively in tempera and oil, reviving techniques of the old masters with a startlingly modern eye.
His art stood apart. It was intimate, stripped down, and full of a quiet power. While many of his contemporaries were loud, Bonechi was subtle, scholarly, and deeply spiritual. His work seemed to ask a simple but urgent question: what if art could be a gateway to transcendence?
Bonechi’s Timeless Women Bridge Myth and Modernity
The City of Women zeroes in on the central theme of the feminine in Bonechi’s work. His female figures—serene, statuesque, mysterious—are both human and divine. Sometimes they’re lone saints, other times a collective sisterhood. Always, they embody a kind of sacred stillness that defies the chaos of the modern world.
According to Museum Director Sergio Risaliti, Bonechi’s women aren’t just figures on canvas—they’re “timeless icons that invite us into a universal story of beauty, spirituality, and human longing.” They remind us of Byzantine icons and Greek statues but wear simple, modern clothing. They feel both eternal and unmistakably real.
Co-curator Eva Francioli adds, “These aren’t fantasy figures. They’re based on real women—drawn from life, memory, and photographs. They hold a tension between the material and the divine. They don’t just occupy space—they transform it.”
Inside the Artist’s “Celestial Cities”
Lorenzo Bonechi’s architectural landscapes—what he called his “Celestial Cities”—are minimalist, geometric, and full of quiet intensity. Inspired by biblical visions and Renaissance harmony, these dreamlike spaces feel like spiritual sanctuaries. They offer a glimpse into how the world might look if built with contemplation in mind.
These cities are more than backdrops. They’re metaphors for the soul—places where transformation happens. Bonechi imagined cities not just as physical spaces but as spiritual homes, echoing our deepest desires for beauty, clarity, and connection.
Lorenzo Bonechi: A Tuscan Soul with a Global Reach
Bonechi was deeply rooted in the art and mysticism of 14th- and 15th-century Tuscany, drawing on Byzantine iconography, Russian spirituality, and the radical simplicity of early Renaissance painting. His early work is raw and expressive, but by the mid-1980s, it sharpens into precise compositions bathed in light and silence. In the ’90s, emotion returns in full force—gestural, powerful, and achingly human.
His vision captured the attention of the global art world. Bonechi’s works were shown in top museums from Tokyo’s National Museum of Modern Art to London’s Tate Gallery, Washington’s Smithsonian, and New York’s Sperone Westwater Gallery. After his death in 1994, he was honored with a posthumous showing at the 46th Venice Biennale (1995). Today, his art lives on in major collections including the Uffizi, Tate Britain, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Beyond Paint: The Power of Presence
There’s something undeniably magnetic about Bonechi’s work. His compositions—sharp lines, radiant colors, and haunting light—carry a sense of calm urgency. They speak to something ancient in us, a longing for order, stillness, and grace. His female figures may seem motionless, but look longer and they begin to breathe, to speak, to transform.
As Bonechi once wrote, “These figures might seem stiff or awkward at first—but they are the first powerful human forms, noble and real.” In them, we recognize ourselves, our ancestors, our myths.
The City of Women: An Invitation to See Differently
With support from Archea Associati, Leofrance S.p.A., and Tacheolab S.r.l., The City of Women isn’t just an exhibition—it’s a tribute to an artist who believed in mystery over spectacle, silence over noise, and spirit over ego.
For anyone curious about the intersection of art, faith, and feminism—this is your moment. Come with an open heart, and you’ll leave with new eyes.
Bonechi once invited viewers to imagine a world beyond what we see—to lean into the invisible, the sacred, the deeply human. In 2025, his voice still resonates, maybe more than ever.
