Roberto Tofani in “Genius and despair of the people of the countryside”

The theme of the exhibition is “places”, understood as carriers of meaning. So Roberto Tofani, always interested in the authentic Tuscan culture from which great authors of the past drew inspiration, from Giovanni Boccaccio to Renato Fucini, will lead the audience on a journey through the countryside and a small village in the Florentine area. He will bring back anecdotes from a distant past (late 1950s, early 1960s), during summer evenings among fireflies, flickering lights, sounds, smells, sensations, laughter, memories.

The gatherings involved a group of people who, despite poverty, ignorance, and despair, felt part of a whole, for a sharing that excluded marginality. The satisfaction of listening, telling, and creating stories, even full of suffering but always showing the desire to entertain and mock that power to be derided, to make their immense humanity a force to oppose oppression.

Tofani affirms that in those stories, the first sirens of something about to arrive can already be perceived, and that soon it will sweep away that whole world completely. It then becomes important to remember, to dig into that past to take what can be useful to us to believe in a hope full of solidarity.

Born in Florence in 1954, Roberto Tofani has always lived in Lastra a Signa. A teacher and vice principal of the glorious Artistic High School “Virgilio” in Empoli, he has dedicated himself to the school as a teacher and “court jester” and with the power of his mind alone, he has written countless literary works that have remained, in fact, in his mind. Now, self-proclaimed old and demented, he writes nonsense to capture that immense variety of colors that has always fluttered around him.