On the map of the existence of Pier Forlano which, like an ancient geographical map, continues to unfurl in the direction of different territories and continents, Ferrara is the origin and the departure point. A city in which the crenellated borders of its castle and the style of its citizens today continue experiencing the refined, free culture of the House of Este and its court.

 

In this sense, being born in the land of Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso and growing up running wild among the ancient walls of Ferrara and the wonderful frescoes of Palazzo Schifanoia are experiences that must have had a considerable impact on the personality of Pier Forlano, and are reflected in his professional figure as a diplomat and in his parallel artistic activity. 

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In him, the humanistic and visionary component of the culture of Ferrara blends with the scientific component inherited from his father.

 

For the artist, his father, Luigi Forlano, a chemistry professor with a sparkling critical intelligence, was a model he both aspired to and rebelled against, a rationalist area to be opposed and distanced, but one that could also be used to introject specific ways of interpreting the world later to be found in his paintings and graphic works: a clear attention to details as subatomic revelations of reality, the analytical decomposition of the image and of concepts into not chemical but symbolic formulas, a curiosity about form as the expression of a movement, a three-dimensionality and a function, albeit an entertaining one. 

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Pier Forlano’s second highly original name, Attinio, reveals his father’s passion for chemistry: it is the name of a rare radioactive chemical element, isolated back in 1899, with a very striking Greek etymology (aktis aktinos = ray of light) that is a reference to the blue highlight emitted by that metal.

 

Following a degree in Politics obtained at the Cesare Alfieri Faculty of Florence, other various training classes such as at the Higher Management School of Rome, the International University College of Turin and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, today Pier Forlano’s diplomatic career is in full swing, and takes him to many lands and continents, putting him in contact with different cultures and experiences.

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Since his first oil painting, created as the development of a poetic text he had written in 1985 at the age of 23 years old, the artistic career of Pier Forlano has unravelled parallel to his professional one, deeply inspired by the real and mental locations of his existence as a “diplomatic nomad”.

 

From the perspective of technique, the desire to experiment with different materials is the common thread that permeates his entire production, which spans from collage to layering, assemblage, high relief and even the introduction of real objects into his paintings. 

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And in terms of his themes, however varied and surreal they may be, they are united by the metaphor adopted by Pier Forlano to describe his creative process: a physical and mental space provides a canvas on which real or imaginary (it makes no difference) objects, symbols and figures are spread and brought to life, as in a real natural or human territory.

 

The Australia Aborigines of “The Songlines” by Bruce Chatwin (theoretician of that disturbing nomadism that is an essential feature of Forlano) follow paths that link them inextricably to the mother land.

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Similarly, the creations of this traveller and artist, who has often mentioned Aborigine Painting, not without reason, are veritable pathways, paved with materials and experiences, leading towards a range of eternally new destinations: places in which roots and memories become a priceless heritage.

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