
The works of art that you can see in Prato (without entering a museum)
At the foot of Palazzo Pretorio in Piazza del Comune, in front of the Bacchino fountain you can admire the "Prometheus Strangling the Vultur II" by Jacques Lipchitz: the Prato museum preserves a substantial core of works by the Lithuanian sculptor, consisting of 21 sculptures in chalk, a bronze and 43 drawings donated in 2013 by the Jacques and Yulla Lipchitz Foundation and by Hanno Mott.
It is one of the symbols of the city: the "Square shape with cut" made by Henry Moore and placed in the center of Piazza San Marco. The marble work has a form of a lock, as if it were the gateway to the city, between the past and the present. Another possible relationship between the object and the city is the position of the clean cut below: the historic center of Prato, in fact, has a similarly clean cut, Viale Piave, in the center of which is the sculpture. The avenue was created by engraving the living medieval urban fabric, including the San Marco gate.
Near Porta Frascati, leaning against the walls of the historic center is the "Mazzocchio", an installation created by Ben Jakober and Yannick Vu. The work, made of steel tubes, represents the figure that divided the artists in two branches at the end of the fifteenth century: those who could draw in perspective and those who could not do it. Paolo Uccello, also the author of very fine frescoes in the Cathedral of Prato, repeatedly ventured into the enterprise. The Mazzocchio is one of the most difficult solids to represent in this way. From the geometrical schematizations of Paolo Uccello is born the contemporary Prato opera, defined by critics as "an allegory of the concept of exactness".
In the Campolmi area, from September 2018, you can admire Waterbones Climbing in Transition State by Loris Cecchini, a glittering structure that climbs on the wall next to the Lazzerini Library.
Opposite the Centro Pecci, in Viale della Repubblica is the work "Exegi Monumentum Aere Perennius", made by Anne and Patrick Poirier, another symbol of the city art. The structure represents "the swing of civilization" and the upheaval of the foundations that we live in our historical period, upset on a planetary scale.
In Piazza Santa Maria in Castello (only in the dark) you can admire the "Great Dreamer" by Fabrizio Corneli, an installation of light and shadow really impressive made in 2014 as part of the event "Prato Contemporanea", an initiative promoted and organized by the Municipality of Prato in close collaboration with the Pecci Centre.
Another recent work to be seen is "The missing link in the chain that is not there 1989 2018" created by the artist Marco Bagnoli, located in the center of Piazza Ciardi which has the function of fountain.
Moving to the province, there is the Quinto Martini park in Seano, an open-air museum at the foot of Montalbano. In this area are set over thirty very enjoyable bronze statues donated by the artist, born in Seano in 1908 (dead in 1990), in an evocative relationship with the green hills that surround the park. But the relationship with the land of origin was already inside the works of the sculptor, defined as a "Romanesque artist of our days".