IDEA , 1996
Glass tubes, neon glass
250 x 250 cm
Maurizio Nannucci (*1939, Florence, IT) is one of Italy’s leading contemporary artists and well known worldwide for his neon
installations. Nannucci has a special interest in how language, letters and visual impact relate to one another. His background
in concrete poetry (the careful and often unconventional arrangement of words to striking visual effect) informs his use of
sentences, words and individual letters in the visual arts. Here the viewer is confronted with a yellow A, red E, blue D and,
to the far left but perhaps only recognisable on second glance, green I. These shape the artwork entitled IDEA, and it is
the title that helps the viewer solve the optical puzzle, the solution being a word intimately related to creativity, innovation
and intellectual property. Further, in the act of interpretation, the arrangement of both letters and of light mutually affect
one another, and in combination alter their surroundings. The German phrase in the later Nannucci work in the EPO collection
means “MORE THAN THE EYE CAN SEE”, which upon being spelled out by the artist this way questions received notions of the visual.
MEHR ALS DAS AUGE SEHEN KANN, 1999
Neon lights, acrylic glass
50 x 1250 x 12 cm
