Art at Florim
Our attention to people, art and beauty is also conveyed through workspaces. We describe our headquarters through its locations. Florim offers a journey into Italian expertise that contains and recounts the ingredients that shape our idea of beauty.
"The Horse" by Mimmo Paladino
This is an imposing bronze artwork created by Mimmo Paladino, a renowned Italian representative of the Transavanguardia movement.
The Transavanguardia is an artistic movement that emerged in the second half of the 1970s, conceived by critic Achille Bonito Oliva amidst the economic crisis that defined this decade and scaled back the productive and cultural optimism of Italy. A movement of transition, cultural nomadism, and a revival of painting, it sought to move beyond the abstract-conceptual language of the neo-avant-garde by returning to traditional painting materials and techniques, often featuring figurative elements with expressionist traits and a revival of motifs and forms from the past. The Transavanguardia theorized a return to craftsmanship, joy, and the vibrant colors of painting after several years of conceptual art dominance.
Mimmo Paladino created “The Horse” specifically to be welcomed into our territory. On the sides of the horse, which stands over 4 meters tall, two symbols highlight this connection: on one side, the drill, a symbol of Modena, and on the other, a reclining human head, representing the value of work and the transformation of materials that distinguish our land and, of course, reflect the work of our company.
Mimmo Paladino
Domenico Paladino (Mimmo) was born in Paduli (Benevento) in 1948. His uncle Salvatore was a painter who introduced him to artistic pursuits. He attended the art high school in Benevento from '64 to '68. His statues are icons, ancient, geometric masks, almost an alphabet of signs that reappear cyclically. He often draws from Etruscan and Samnite art. It is the simplicity of the form that gives his work an archaic quality.
"Love Path" by Giuseppe Gallo
“Percorso Amoroso,” positioned on the west side of the new 4.0 factory in Fiorano, is a bronze sculpture created by Giuseppe Gallo in 2004. The majestic piece (6.6 x 3.7 x 1.80 meters) uses bronze as an ever-changing, taut skin that absorbs and regenerates light.
The 5 elements that make up the “love path” follow one another, forming a hypothetical circle. The dance of the 5 figures must repeat exactly 5 times to describe a perfect circle. For this reason, the sculpture is conceived as a circular work that moves in infinite time and can be interpreted from right to left or from left to right in a perpetual discourse, much like that of love. If the circle were closed, the inner side would represent a feminine sculpture, and the outer side, a masculine one.
The hand, which differentiates humans from animals, is one of Gallo’s favored symbols. The hand represents power but also the artist’s hand, which in the artwork points towards the dromedary.
Giuseppe Gallo
Giuseppe Gallo was born in March 1954 in Rogliano (CS) and has made painting a tool of everyday poetry.
"Time is our friend" by Olivo Barbieri
Immense waterfalls, the most beautiful in the world, are the protagonists of a photography journey created by Olivo Barbieri for Florim, titled "Il tempo è nostro amico" (Time is our friend).
This claim originated with Floor Gres in the 1960s and today effectively encapsulates the company's values: enduring strength, planning, and the ability to always align with the needs of contemporary design and architecture. The project, which also featured in a Floor Gres print campaign (2007/2008), is a true world tour in a low-altitude flight over the most beautiful waterfalls on earth. Olivo Barbieri chose to create a photographed journey based on images of four waterfalls located on the borders of different continents: Victoria Falls (Zambia/Zimbabwe), Iguazù Falls (Argentina/Brazil), Khone Falls (Laos/Cambodia), and Niagara Falls (Canada/USA).
The waterfalls are moving surfaces, a metaphor for life and matter that constantly regenerate. Icons recognizable worldwide, they convey a message of sustainability and environmental awareness.
Olivo Barbieri
Olivo Barbieri was born in Carpi (Modena) in 1954. In the early 1970s, he attended the Faculty of Education and DAMS in Bologna, and it was during these years that his interest in photography began.
"High definition" by Luca Pancrazzi
The “alta definizione” (High definition) project, conceived and directed by Luca Pancrazzi, is based on the loss and reconstruction of the image through the deconstruction of reality.
Two large panels made with Casamood glass mosaic transform the space into a place of high definition, where the artist recaptures his idea of the urban landscape, recreating with materials and colors a “mood” of sequences from contemporary reality. Glimpses of metropolises, skyscrapers, busy highways, smokestacks, and cranes towering over the backgrounds: these are the images of everyday life that accompany the path created inside the room. The viewer is projected into everyday reality, immersed in scenes already seen and lived but rediscovered through the deconstruction of boundaries and their gradual reconstruction.
A constant exchange of perceptions is created between figures and human rationality, a continuous shift of references along an inner journey that engages the senses and memory. Man is led into a surreal dimension that slowly transforms.
Luca Pancrazzi
Luca Pancrazzi was born in Figline Valdarno (Florence) in 1961. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence before moving to Milan, where he has lived and worked since 1994.
“Hotel Chimera” by Elena Salmistraro
A heterogeneous mix of elements of different origins and natures, combined to create a unique ceramic artwork of nearly 20 square meters. An artistic, figurative expression composed of 80 different fragments, each of which is an abstract work in its own right, a piece numbered and hand-signed by Elena Salmistraro.
This is the concept of the work designed by the Milanese designer, which symbolically and graphically retraces Hotel Chimera: a space of escape and evasion from reality, an imaginative place born from a heterogeneous blend of elements.
Just like the figure of the Chimera—whose body in Greek mythology included parts of different animals—this 480x400 cm artwork consists of 80 ceramic elements measuring 40x60 cm each. Every single piece hides a subtle filigree that narrates the complete design of the artwork. A reproduction of the piece, faithful to the original in design and size, is on display in the Florim Gallery.
Elena Salmistraro
Elena Salmistraro (Milan, 1983) graduated in Industrial Design from the Politecnico di Milano in 2008; the following year, she founded her professional studio—also in Milan, together with architect Angelo Stoli—where she focuses on product design and architectural projects.
“Archeologie” by Franco Guerzoni
“Archeologie” originates from an original work, created by Franco Guerzoni specifically for CEDIT, and is expressed in a series of flat ceramic slabs characterized by complex backgrounds with accumulations and dense pigmentations of powdered colors and chalky materials derived from the technique of “fresco tear-off”.
Embracing the idea that “the wall is like a book to be leafed through,” with Archeologie, the author transfers his pictorial style onto large ceramic surfaces, articulated in visual signs that stimulate “an inward journey that allows one to trace the experiences, memories, signs, symbols, everything that [the wall] has gathered over the centuries.”
The collection is a reverse archaeology, finding its significant definition not in a retroactive narrative hypothesis focused on the past, but rather in an ideal sketch of the future, rendered through an amalgamation of signs that contain and overlap different historical eras.
Franco Guerzoni
Franco Guerzoni (Modena, 1948), artist, began in the early 1970s a personal exploration of the world of archaeology, focusing particularly on aspects related to the stratification of culture and the idea of the “ancient” as loss and subtraction.