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On the first floor of the former “Monte dei Pegni” is the conference room with its lunette vaulted roof. Lining the walls are ten paintings by Florentine artist Vinicio Berti, acquired in 2007 by the City of Prato at the behest of the artist's heir, who passed away in 1991.
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These artworks are created using mixed media, oil or acrylic on canvas, plywood or hardboard. They are arranged in chronological order, illustrating the evolution of the painting style used by Berti, one of the leading exponents of Italian Abstractionism. In 1950 the artist collaborated on the publication of the “Manifesto of Classical Abstractionism”. After that moment, he began his rebuilding phase within Abstractionism, incorporating the dimension of the contemporary into his artworks, often with a denunciatory character. An example of this is “AHH”, one of the paintings inspired by the Hiroshima tragedy. Here, the letters A for Atom and H for Hydrogen, painted in thick red brushstrokes that stand out against a yellow background and appear to be gripped in a black and white toothed vice, become the expression of an “atomic scream”. Later, in the 1980s, Berti devoted himself to the experience of the “Looking Up” cycle, a kind of spiritual testament where the depiction of buildings vertiginously tending towards the sky evokes the idea of continuous becoming. The series includes “Looking Up (lucidly)", “Looking Up (laboriously)” and “Looking Up (grandly)”.
