Late in January this year the Italian costume and set designer and theatre director Cristian Finoia died at the young age of 39 while waiting for a heart transplant. He was one of the most promising of Italian threatre directors and was building an international reputation with productions in Japan and Qatar as well as most European countries. Cristian had so many plans, so many projects to work upon, so his death is a tragic loss to the artistic and theatrical community. There are some videos about his work on Vimeo and Youtube.
In early 2008 I bought a tarot he produced. It was self published and he only issued five copies, signed and numbered. It was expensive but I felt it was of significant cultural value that I wanted it in my collection. I wrote about it at the time in the entry for 25 Jan 2008 for my tarot weblog.
25 Jan 2008 Yesterday evening I was able to buy a rather rare and obscure Italian tarot 'I tarocchi di Cristian Finoia', 22 cards with original box and booklet, self published in 2007 by Atelier Finoia art studio in an edition of only five copies, signed and numbered. I have bought number four which was apparently the only one publicly available. The creator of this tarot is the stage and costume designer Cristian Finoia who has created sets and costumes for over twenty theatre and opera productions (including La Traviata, Aida, Idomeneo, Elisir d'Amore, Metamorfosi, Oberto). Strangely, I was able to buy this without any counterbidding, which suggests that few people are interested in collecting such pieces. I am quite surprised at this, because anything produced by a known artist in an edition of only five copies surely must be a good investment and worthy addition to a collection, even if it was just a promotional item given to some of his friends. Perhaps people are just not seeing the value in such pieces. Anyway this is my gain and other collectors loss. The artwork itself is rather captivating.Attached Image (viewed 33 times):
|
