Fragments

Thirty-two years after his first exhibition at our gallery and in the occasion of the centenary of the birth, Galleria Massimo Minini pays homage to Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006). Fragments is both a major new book and eight exhibitions that will take place internationally during May 2025 in Basel, Brescia, Edinburgh, Hamburg, London, New York, Palma de Mallorca and Vienna, curated and edited by Pia Maria Simig.

An artist, poet and landscape designer, Ian Hamilton Finlay reinvigorated the classical tradition in a body of work that encompasses a variety of creative forms to celebrate the sustaining power of words. He is best known for his garden at Little Sparta, set in the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, where he lived and worked for the last 40 years of his life, and for his guillotine installation, A View to the Temple, at Documenta, Kassel, 1987. He significantly influenced the concrete poetry movement, and his extensive printed poetical and graphical works were published by Wild Hawthorn Press, which he co-founded in 1961. His visual art work, achieved in collaboration with expert artists and craftspeople, can be found in museums, parks and gardens worldwide.

Amazing how time flies! 32 years after the first exhibition together, 33 years after that unforgettable visit to Scotland…

A fortunate summer for the good weather, with some sudden showers but a very fine and even pleasant rain, among the heather hills, the ruins of ancient castles, the distilleries of poweful and rare single malt whisky, the stones engraved with very ancient writings that certainly inspired the poet IAN HAMILTON FINLAY: as a modern visual poet he has managed to integrate the ways of the past into the forms of the present.

It is probably in this way that Ian’s writings acquire a charge and a charisma that transform them into integral parts of the nature of the garden of LITTLE SPARTA. An enchanted garden where nature and culture grow in symbiosis, where the DE RERUM finds its raison d’être, renewing the miracle of Lucretius’ intuitions. Admitting that there was a contrast between the two worlds, this has long since been recomposed in the enchanted forest. Nature embraces culture and sculpture offers protection and attention. For his part, Finlay, a solitary poet who translates ancient texts with minimal changes in meaning, asks for extreme attention, launches impossible proposals («and the lyre shall lie down with the bow»), speaks to us of weapons, of war, of Apollo with a knife in his hand ready to strike. The poetry of Ian Hamilton Finlay will protect us.

Massimo Minini

Ian Hamilton Finlay: Fragments takes place in May 2025 at: Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh; Kewenig, Palma de Mallorca; Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia; Victoria Miro, London; David Nolan Gallery, New York; Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg; Stampa Galerie, Basel; Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna.

Ian Hamilton Finlay: Fragments book

Published on 8 May 2025 by ACC Art Books and edited by Pia Maria Simig, Fragments draws together one hundred works by Ian Hamilton Finlay, each accompanied by a short, fragmentary text by the artist and myriad distinguished writers who wrote about Finlay’s work during his lifetime. It features introductory essays by Stephen Bann (CBE, Emeritus Professor of History of Art at the University of Bristol) and Tom Lubbock (chief art critic of The Independent from 1997 until his death in 2011) and includes 100 full colour plates. Additional texts by: Yves Abrioux, Stephen Bann, Prudence Carlson, Patrick Duncombe, Julia Eames, Patrick Eyres, Alec Finlay, Ian Hamilton Finlay, George Gilliland, Harry Gilonis, and Tom Lubbock. Designed by John and Orna Designs.