Entry hall of La Tinaia rooms, set inside of the Ex Mental Hospital San Salvi in Florence. The last ward closed in 1998. During the '70s when the laboratory started, there were about 2.000 patients from the whole province.

GUIDO represents the history of La Tinaia: he has attended the laboratory every day since its beginning (1975).

After 40 years of an artistic career at La Tinaia, drawing represents for Guido his view on the world, his natural way to share joys, pains, and myths of a real and imagined life.

Guido's tenacious and daily expressive will is the best thing for those who shared Guido's experience.

As well as the never-ending pleasure to share this experience with whoever is lucky enough to sit in front of him.

The elegance and the evocative power of his drawing come together with an irony that is sometimes provocative but never out of place or vulgar: it manages to combine highs and lows, flesh and soul, depth and surface.

MARCO arrived at La Tinaia in 2006 after many years of “self-isolation” spent in his house. The encounter with La Tinaia and with his expressive possibilities gave him back confidence in his abilities.

From the beginning he took up portrait production, this choice starting a specific technical artistic path and giving him the opportunity to again experience human relationships with his models.

The portraits involved many kinds of people: from ordinary people sometimes chosen casually, and sometimes not, to famous personalities that caught his interest for some reason (historical, ideological, cultural).

His view on the world, both close and distant enabled him to find again one of his most endearing features: irony, which fills the laboratory thanks to his daily presence.

ANDREA has attended La Tinaia for only a few years, but his presence is very visible.

Andrea during one of his smoking breaks.

UMBERTO has been at La Tinaia since 1978. Thanks to his fast way of drawing, his production has reached a remarkable quantity of works (more than 15.000).

Umberto works in a corner of La Tinaia where his works surround him like a very big colourful blanket. The portraits series set up on the glass wall which filters the light on to his table is particularly special.

CLAUDIO has been at La Tinaia since 1981 and he likes accompanying his cigarettes with tales of facts and people linked to La Tinaia.

He underlines that he was the first one 'coming from outside', that is he is the first one attending La Tinaia who was never a resident in the mental hospital.

LAURA has been at La Tinaia for a few years. Her work focuses on above all the reinterpretation of significant works from the History of Art.

GIUSEPPE has been at La Tinaia since 2008 and he is always busy in the illustrated narration of liberation by catholic-communist armies of cruelly occupied imaginary islands: a never ending fight between good and evil in which the first one always wins.

MASSIMO has been at La Tinaia since 1987 and was a patient of San Salvi Hospital when he was a child. La Tinaia for him is like a family.

ANGELA has been at La Tinaia since 1987. Her production is varied but always recognizable, thanks to a very personal poetic, in which sounds, dreams, and childhood settings become magically real.

ANTONIO putting on a finishing touch. He has been at La Tinaia for only a few months and is starting to settle in.

Working in the laboratory.

Smoking break , sacred and key moments which give rhythm to the day in the laboratory.

The smoking room, the main place for exchanging ideas, moods and projects.

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During the last 40 years of La Tinaia, more than 400 people have found the strength to leave behind firstly their hospital experience and secondly their homes to start a journey at La Tinaia.

This strength, this courage and the beauty achieved will be for me an everlasting landmark and an unfading memory.