Partner Sergio Miranda
Queer Places:
Via dell'Erta Canina, 30a, 50125 Firenze FI
Piero Santi (Volterra, 5 April 1912 - Florence, 5 March 1990)
was a writer and art critic. A central figure in Florentine cultural life starting from the 1930s, he lived his homosexuality openly, unlike most of his contemporaries.
A friend of Carlo Emilio Gadda;
Gadda inspired the character of the homosexual Bonetti in "Il Sapore della
Menta" (1963).
In 1918 he moved with his family to Florence. He graduated first in Law and then in Literature, with a thesis on the literary magazine "La Ronda". He taught Italian, Latin, Greek, in the classical high school of the Piarists. The first narrative activity is intertwined with critical interventions in magazines that characterize the political and cultural climate of the years before the war (years 1937-1942). He frequented writers, critics and artists, including Aldo Palazzeschi, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Sandro Penna. He was a friend of Ottone Rosai, Mario Luzi, Alessandro Parronchi and the whole group of so-called Hermetic poets, and had the esteem of the best writers of the time. In 1967 he won the Teramo Prize with the short story Il Nove, on July 10th. The Jury was composed, among others, by Diego Valeri, Carlo Bo, Luigi Baldacci. In 1970 he held the chair of Italian literature at the Ravenna Academy, a city which he then frequented assiduously. In 1984 he was one of only three intellectuals who agreed to be interviewed on the subject of "homosexuality and culture" in the book La pagina tornata, published in that year by Giovanni Dall'Orto . He lived in Florence in via dell'Erta Canina 30 / A with Sergio Miranda, his heir, until his death.
My published books:
