GIUSEPPE CHIARI
Giuseppe Chiari (1926 - 2007) garnered recognition as an avant-garde conceptual artist and experimental musician and composer. Born in Florence in, Chiari studied a wide range of topics: mathematics, engineering, piano, and composition.1 As an artist, he was highly interested in the interactions between music, language, gesture, and image. This, coupled with Chiari's admiration of the works of John Cage, led to his fascination with experimentation in visual music. Chiari is well-regarded for his involvement in Neo-Dada circles and, more specifically, the Fluxus art movement, which was an international and interdisciplinary community of creators who carried out experimental art performances with emphasis on the process over the resulting product.
Chiari also utilized the notion of conceptual experiences in his work: short passages would converge repeatedly with no consistent order to form complex musical pieces.2 In effect, this method of composition was meant to highlight expressive freedoms and indeterminacy in art. Chiari referred to his complex music style as “action music,” as it combined the sounds of traditional instruments alongside “random” sounds such as running water, dry leaves, and stones.3 Like many of his contemporaries, Chiari was appreciative of the improvisational qualities of art and music, as demonstrated by works such as Gesti su un piano, La Strada, and Playing the city.
Outside of his work as a musician, Giuseppe Chiari was also a writer, the most notable of his writings being Music without counterpoint, Teatrino, Method for playing, Aesthetik, and Doubt harmony. As an artist, Chiari was known to experiment with several different mediums including collages, sheet music, and photographs.
Chiari's artworks are partially preserved at the International Centre of Contemporary Art Tornabuoni in Florence, where it was exhibited in 2015.
2 Radio Papesse: Giuseppe Chiari