Sandro Martini, internationally renowned conceptual artist, best known for his «sewn canvases», died in Livorno at the age of 81. Having lived between Milan, New York and San Francisco, Martini has always been close to his city, to which he has dedicated memories, projects and installations. His artistic production has ranged between paintings, mixed techniques and sculptures, with works from the 1960s such as the large painting “La via del colibrì” and from the 1970s “Bleu purple and desire” and “Blue violet +”. In the 1990s he proposed the series of «transcriptions», where reference is also made in the titles to the lexicon of other cultures, using mixed technique on canvas or lined paper: in addition to enhancing the expressive color of the works, Martini seems to want to underline even with sought-after titles the cultural and temporal stratifications they contain.
After these works, from the mid-1990s, Martini conceives the «sewn canvases»: in these works fragments of colored canvases are sewn onto the surface, the color black, red and yellow, fragments of fabric and stitching threads merge to give life to suggestive material compositions. Sandro Martini in 1975, already away from Tuscany for many years, was invited to create a large installation for the Progressive Museum of Contemporary Art in the city of Livorno, in the premises of the nineteenth-century Villa Maria. From this installation was born the acquisition for the civic collections of Livorno of two works (“Red and desire”; “Blue and desire”, 1973).