This work made by Maurizio Nannucci for the Roman Auditorium is a large luminous composition created using twenty neon writings, ten of which are blue and ten red. The blue writings are part of a work of art called “Antologia” (“Anthology” – 1967/2002) with which Nannucci attempted to explore the relationship between art, music, architecture and language; this is a “work in progress” that the artist from Florence has been working on ever since the Sixties. The red writings, instead, are quotations taken from famous musicians, writers, poets and philosophers such as Plato, Haydn, Strawinsky, Borges, Russolo, Kandinsky, Berio, Lennon, etc. These quotations mainly describe how musical language is perceived.
“Polifonia” (“Poliphony”) is a synthesis of Nannucci’s research on the relationship between various artistic categories and disciplines. This is a research he has been carrying out ever since the early days of his career. Polifonia is a luminous path developing along the whole  Foyer lenght (about 200 metres long), with a series of neon texts asserting the universal value of the language of art and music. These latter are are written in Italian, Spanish, French, English and German.

The aura and splendour of the coloured neon writings together with the symbolic significance of the writings, added a magical and virtual dimension to Renzo Piano’s architecture.

The Artist

Maurizio Nannucci (Florence, 1939) is one of the most well known Italian artists of the last decades. Since the middle of the Sixties, Nannucci has been exploring the complex relationship between art, language and imagery by creating original conceptual works of art using multimedia instruments such as neon, photography, videos, sounds, artist’s editions and books. The first neon writings were made in 1967. These writings have added a greater dimension to his work and a new method for him to perceive space. Nannucci has always been interested in the relationship between opera / architecture / urban landscapes and it is perceivable how the integration between environment, language, colour and light is central to his works. It is on these grounds that, in the Nineties, he started collaborating with Renzo Piano and other architects such as Massimiliano Fuksas, Mario Botta, Nicholas Grimshaw, and Stephan Braunfels. Maurizio Nannucci has taken part in various editions of the Venice Biennale Exhibition, the Documenta of Kassel, the Biennals of Sao Paulo, Sydney and Istanbul. He has participated in more than three hundred exhibitions in museums and art galleries all over the world.