Giuseppe Chiari. ART IS EASY
At Lucca Art Fair, celebrating the centenary of the artist’s birth
On the centenary of Giuseppe Chiari’s birth, Lucca Art Fair celebrates one of the leading Italian figures of Fluxus with an exhibition curated by Armanda Gori, in collaboration with the Archivio Opere Giuseppe Chiari in Florence.
Giuseppe Chiari was born in Florence on 26 September 1926. Exactly one hundred years later, the centenary of his birth coincides with the tenth edition of Lucca Art Fair, taking place from 25 to 27 September 2026 at the Real Collegio in Lucca.
To mark this occasion, the fair presents Giuseppe Chiari. ART IS EASY, an exhibition curated by Armanda Gori and organised in collaboration with the Archivio Opere Giuseppe Chiari – Florence. Bringing together works from the 1960s to the 2000s, the exhibition spans more than forty years of a practice that consistently brought music, words, images and gestures into dialogue.
Composer, pianist and visual artist, Giuseppe Chiari (Florence, 26 September 1926 – 9 May 2007) was one of the leading Italian figures associated with Fluxus. His practice challenged traditional boundaries between artistic disciplines and questioned the hierarchies between author, performer and audience, expanding the very concept of music beyond performance and the written score.
In Chiari’s work, music can encompass everyday gestures, noise, silence, words and the very act of listening. The musical score ceases to be merely a tool for performance and becomes a visual space to explore, alter and reinvent.
The exhibition takes its title from the work ART IS EASY, in which the handwritten phrase runs across a musical score alongside an image of a piano and fields of colour.
Behind this apparently simple statement lies an essential aspect of Chiari’s thinking: art as an open possibility, an experience not necessarily bound by conventions, hierarchies or the authority of rules.
“Art is easy” thus becomes an invitation to experiment, to question established codes and to recognise invention and freedom of gesture as accessible forms of creative possibility.
This idea runs throughout the exhibition. In the works on display at the Real Collegio, sheets of music paper are marked by signs, erasures and interventions of colour that disrupt the regularity of musical notation. Words become statements, instructions or suggestions for action, while images, printed fragments and objects come together in collages and assemblages.
Musical instruments, whether drawn, reproduced or physically incorporated into the works, continue to evoke sound even in their stillness.
The relationship between order and improvisation is one of the recurring threads running through the exhibition. The score becomes a field of possibilities, the mark retains the energy of the gesture, and colour introduces accents, interruptions, pauses and contrasts.
Music and visual art are no longer separate territories. To look at a work by Chiari is also to imagine its sonic dimension; reading a phrase can become an action; following a mark means entering a process that directly engages the viewer. The exhibition thus offers an opportunity to explore a practice that, decades later, continues to question the way we see, listen and participate in the artistic experience.
The presence of Giuseppe Chiari takes on particular significance within the tenth edition of Lucca Art Fair. The exhibition will be open throughout the three days of the fair, from 25 to 27 September, while Saturday, 26 September will mark exactly one hundred years since the artist’s birth.
This anniversary becomes an opportunity not only to revisit his artistic journey, but also to bring renewed attention to one of the most radical ideas at the heart of his practice: the possibility of conceiving art as an open territory, where disciplines, languages and roles can continually be questioned and redefined.
ART IS EASY therefore invites the Lucca Art Fair audience to enter Giuseppe Chiari’s universe through works spanning more than four decades, rediscovering, in the relationship between sound and silence, word and image, rules and freedom, an artistic practice rooted in the possibility of experimentation.
INFORMATION
Where
Real Collegio – Piazza del Collegio, 13, Lucca
When
25–27 September 2026
Opening Hours
Friday 3.00 pm–8.00 pm
Saturday 10.00 am–8.00 pm
Sunday 10.00 am–8.00 pm
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