Aroldo Marinai´s Frogmen project

a pioneer of street art in Florence

Abstract

Aroldo Marinai´s (Florence, Italy, 1941) first – and, in relative terms, quite late - experience of the art world came through a street art project. Inspired by a recent work stay in New York, at the end of 1979 he decided to enact a creative intervention in his own city through a stencil image of a scuba diver. This act was subsequently followed by a gallery exhibition and the production of a book, entitled Frogmen: Un segno sui muri come per caso (1980), in which he collated all available documents related to the piece: a diary, photographs, newspaper clippings and a police report. As early as the 1980s, Frogmen had already begun to open up a conversation concerning the complex relationship between street art and advertisement, street art and the gallery space, or the ephemeral and its documentation (before social media). Marinai managed to capture these debates, that continue to provoke interest and discussion within the field of urban studies, – some of them not without a degree of controversy –making them part of Frogmen. This article aims to shine a light on and bring attention to a project that up to this point has been overlooked critically, and that merits analysis for its originality as well as its pioneering role within the context of Florence street art.