The Fiat Fiorino is one of Italy’s most familiar work vehicles. Seeing one completely covered in paintings, however, is considerably less common. In the Valdinievole area of Tuscany, you may come across a particularly unusual example: it belongs to Giuliano Pucci, an artist and farmer from Pescia who has transformed his van into a kind of mobile artwork — and, above all, into a personal declaration of freedom.
The idea has a history of its own. In the United States, between the late 1960s and early 1970s, the art car movement emerged, partly as a reaction against the standardization of industrial production. Cars were transformed into works of art through painting, sculpture and other forms of creative intervention. By the 1980s, the phenomenon had developed into a recognizable urban subculture.
Pucci calls himself an “artist-farmer.” He began painting after retiring, during the Covid pandemic, when he started experimenting with colors and brushes. The decisive inspiration came in 2021, on the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death. Pucci began transforming his Fiorino into his own visual interpretation of the Divine Comedy.
Dante’s Divine Comedy, according to Pucci
“I reproduced it as I see it,” he explains, “not as other people see it.”
The work began with the body of the van and gradually spread to the interior, the wheels and the cab. At some point, Pucci decided to take the project even further.
“Then I thought: ‘You know what? I’m going to paint the engine too.’ There really aren’t any painted engines…”
It was not an easy task. He had to modify his brushes in order to reach every corner of the engine compartment. From there, the work progressed slowly, one image at a time.
“I already had the figures in my mind and knew how I wanted to make them. I had already visualized the battery and all the other parts. And so I arrived at what could be a finished work — but it might not be finished at all. If the right image comes into my mind, I’ll pick up the colors again and keep going.”
Pucci has now spent five years working on the Fiorino, following a rhythm very different from that of traditional artistic production: he paints when inspiration comes.
A work made in solitude
During the winter, he can devote a few extra hours to the project, especially because “it’s already dark by five.” But whenever the right idea arrives, he picks up his brush again and continues adding to the work.
“Alone,” he says, “with the lamps I use in the field to light everything up, and my cat keeping me company.”
The idea of painting the Fiorino had been in his mind for years, but he never quite managed to start. Once he did, however, he found it difficult to stop. His personal artistic geography gradually spread across every part of the vehicle.
On the hood, he painted his interpretation of the Tree of Fertility in Massa Marittima. On one corner of the side panel, he paid tribute to Francesco Nuti, an artist and filmmaker he has always admired.
“I’ve always liked him and wanted to pay tribute to him,” Pucci says. “His art, at times visionary, would probably have earned him a place in Dante’s work.”
The Fiorino has thus become more than a work vehicle. It is an artwork in constant evolution, slowly built through images, references and personal intuitions.
Pucci’s story has also attracted the attention of Osservatorio Outsider Art, which devoted a lengthy article to the artist-farmer in issue No. 31 of the magazine, written by Giada Carraro. His work also reached a wider audience through a reel posted on social media by Alessandro Martini, who had happened to come across his “masterpiece on wheels.”
For Pucci, an unexpected moment of national attention followed. But, for now, the Fiorino remains what it has always been for him: an unfinished work, waiting to be continued whenever the right image comes to mind.
