There won’t just be the usual unmistakable pink coloring the great start of the Giro d’Italia in Bulgaria. There will also be the colors of the Reggio maestro Natino Chirico, those shades that enhance and tell athletic gestures and also stories of friendship. His work on canvas in oil and acrylic (160 by 160) – which portrays the eternal rivals Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali exchanging the water bottle in the most intense moment of the 1952 Tour de France – will be exhibited at the National Art Gallery in Sofia. «From the managers of the Farnesina Collection who guard the work, I received a request to authorize that the work can be exhibited at the exhibition “Pedaling towards the future – brief history of Italy on two wheels” on the occasion of the Giro d’Italia 2026. «I accepted – admits the painter from Reggio – with great pleasure this invitation for the social, sporting and cultural value that the presence of these great protagonists of Italian cycling has in an event that has always encompassed healthy Italian pride and the our sense of belonging and which, at the same time, takes on an international character, crossing borders and breaking down barriers, recovering spaces, territories and relationships between peoples in the name of cycling which counts and which unites in the magic of every pedal stroke”.
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