Col Tempo

Coinciding with a major retrospective exhibition at MAXXI, Rome, Col tempo, 1956–2024 provides a complete and long-awaited retrospective of the career of Guido Guidi, sequenced by the artist himself in his typically illuminating, associative style. The book begins with some of the earliest photographs Guidi made, aged fifteen, in the countryside around his home in Cesena in the Italian region of Romagna. The sequence that follows, covering almost seventy years, encompasses a wide range of styles, forms, and approaches as it traces the evolution of one of the most important voices in contemporary photography. It includes journeys to the USA, Russia, Turkey, and Portugal, and studies of the works of architects including Carlo Scarpa, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. Consistently, though, it returns to the modest agricultural landscapes where Guidi was born and still lives and works today, among which he has developed the revelatory visual language for which he is celebrated as a modern master.

Including many of Guidi’s most famous works and series alongside unseen early and new works, paintings, and writings, this book reveals the influences of Early Renaissance frescoes, minimalism, Pop art, and semiotics on his rich and layered oeuvre. It is completed by a suite of critical essays by Frits Gierstberg, Florian Ebner, Alessandro Coco, and exhibition curators Simona Antonacci, Pippo Ciorra, and Antonello Frongia.