Luciano Pistoi

Luciano Pistoi (Rome, January 30, 1927 – Radda in Chianti, February 19, 1995) was an Italian art critic, dealer, journalist, publisher, promoter and organizer of cultural events. He is considered one of the most prominent figures in the postwar Italian art world.

Turin Luciano Pistoi was born in Rome into a family of Tuscan origins. He moved with his father Silvio, a railway worker, his mother Concetta, and his brothers Ennio and Mario Pistoi to Turin where he attended secondary school. He frequented the studio of painter Pippo Oriani where he developed a passion for Futurism and began a brief career as a painter that ended in the late 1940s. During WWII he joined the clandestine Italian Communist Party (PCI). who died tragically in England in July 1983 after falling from a cliff.

He started working as an art critic for the newspaper L'Unità as a proofreader and then in the 1950s became the official art critic, collaborating regularly under the editorship of Luciano Barca, and later became the editor of the cultural page, which he managed until 1957.

From the early 1960s Pistoi was interested in work by young artists like Piero Manzoni, Pino Pascali, Giulio Paolini, Luciano Fabro and Christo, parallel to his focus on protagonists of the European avant-gardes such as Francis Picabia, René Magritte, Fernand Léger, and Yves Tanguy.

In 1967 he began a relationship with Eva Menzio, daughter of the painter Francesco Menzio, who separated from the critic Paolo Fossati and moved with her children Filippo and Caterina to live with Pistoi. In 1972 their son Francesco was born.

In 1988 in Florence, with the aim of "promoting and relaunching the quality art market in Italy," Pistoi organized a unique invitation-only art fair in the magnificent setting of the Fortezza da Basso, which he titled "The Most Beautiful Gallery in Italy." It was in reality a large exhibition hosting a selection of the most innovative galleries on the Italian art scene, each presenting the best of the artistic research of those years. Despite enormous success with the public and critics, due to constant attacks from anonymous Florentine colleagues, the fair closed its doors after two years of activity, before it could grow into an international fair.

In July 1994, Pistoi together with Giuliano Briganti and Luisa Laureati organized the exhibition Affinità. Five Artists in San Gimignano, inviting Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Eliseo Mattiacci, Nunzio, and Giulio Paolini to intervene not with a simple site-specific work, but with a piece that would go beyond the classical conception of sculpture and engage in dialogue with the natural and urban environment. Fabro and Nunzio chose intimate spaces for their works, almost niches; Giulio Paolini placed a sundial on the exterior wall of the church of Sant'Agostino; Mattiacci countered the structural verticality of San Gimignano with a horizontal installation; Jannis Kounellis created an alternative bell tower alongside the existing one.

The project conceived by Pistoi, Briganti, and Laureati was intended to become an ongoing cultural proposition that would expand over time to other towns, engaging internationally renowned artists in solo appearances in neighboring villages. The idea was picked up with convenient timing by several assistants, who founded the Associazione Culturale Continua and transformed it into the event that would go on to thrive under the title "Arte all'Arte."

Luciano Pistoi died at his home in Santa Maria Novella, Radda in Chianti, on 19 February 1995.