The Innovative Pathway

Lastrucci is considered one of today’s masters of Florentine mosaic art, maybe even the most important one, and this is due in part to one of his most charismatic masterpieces, the portrait of J.F. Lizzadro exposed in the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art museum in Elmhurst, near Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Together with his son Iacopo, Bruno Lastrucci is a world-renowned figure in the sphere of Florentine mosaic.

There is a word, which is also an artistic idea, revealing Iacopo and Bruno Lastrucci’s “secret” and explaining why they are such accomplished figures in the world of mosaic, and this word is “Montici”.

Santa Margherita a Montici is an elegant hilly area on the outskirts of Florence, where in 1927 a young American artist named Richard Almond Blow decided to buy Villa Piazza Calda.

Many years afterwards, Bruno Lastrucci, who was then very young, began to collaborate with the art laboratory Scuola Montici, which Blow named after the area in which it stood.

The Scuola del Mosaico Montici developed the techniques of representing the human form in stone, thus filling a long-standing gap in the evolution of mosaic art.

It had been, in fact, Giovanni Montelatici who made the latest significant step forward from a pictorial point of view.

The artist had opened a mosaic studio at the beginning of the 20th century and for the first time in the history of Florentine mosaic had successfully tried to represent human faces using natural colours.

The members of the Scuola Montici have always produced stunningly modern masterpieces reflecting the influence of the most important contemporary artists of the time: unique stone works worthy of exhibition in famous contemporary art museums.

Still today, the development of the “Montici” concept is the pivotal evolution of Iacopo and Bruno Lastrucci’s style of representing the 'sense of the Image'. In this regard, some excellent modern works are worthy to be mentioned, completed in the last 15 years after meeting with the painter Luciano Schifano.

The Classical Pathway

During the “Montici” period, Lastrucci also developed a long-lasting relationship with the world of classical mosaic and worked with mosaicists bound to traditional subjects.

He, thus, studied and worked with master Fiaschi, with whom he collaborated until 1968, and with master Nenci, the first artistic director of the Scuola Montici.

The year 1968 was a very important one for Bruno Lastrucci both from a personal and artistic point of view: it is the year in which his son Iacopo came into the world and it is also the year in which he decided to dedicate a period of some years exclusively to his works in his own art studio in Piazza Calda in Santa Margherita a Montici.

It is in this period that Lastrucci completed the stone portrait of Joseph Lizzadro, permanently exhibited at the Lizzadro Lapidary Art Museum, and other important works that today are part of prestigious private collections.

Thanks to his indisputable artistic capacity, in a few years he became artistic director of Musiva, the most important gallery and art laboratory dedicated to Florentine mosaic of the period, whose first artistic director had been the famous Giovanni Montelatici.

He remained with Musiva until 2001, when he decided to dedicate exclusively to his works in his studio in Via de’ Macci 9, together with his son Iacopo, with whom he has established a unique artistic fraternity.

Thanks to Iacopo’s excellent ability to capture human figures in stone, their relationship has transformed into a daily collaboration between two great masters of Florentine mosaic.

Some of Iacopo Lastrucci’s works are highly worthy of recognition, for example a magnificent representation of the prophet Daniel, whose brilliant colours recall the original ones used in the Renaissance, and other valuable works of art.

An American family linked to the Duke University of North Carolina has recently bought some of Iacopo Lastrucci’s most beautiful works, which are now part of the family’s private collection.

For the same family Lastrucci has created the coat of arms dominating the entrance door of their historic residence in New York.

Iacopo and Bruno Lastrucci’s works are absolute masterpieces demonstrating an excellent capacity of understanding the colour embedded in the stone, which makes their intricate stone intarsias worthy of being exhibition in international museums and in important private collections.

A special and sincere thanks to Joan and Peter Vilim.
Their help in the optimization of this english version its been truly precious and full of sensibility to explain the artistic 'deep sense' of the Florentine Mosaic.

Iacopo and Bruno Lastrucci.
Florence Italy 11 october 2009