Luca Pignatelli

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Luca Pignatelli (born 22 June 1962) is an Italian artist.

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Biography

Luca Pignatelli was born in 1962 in Milan, where he currently lives and works in a home-studio, self-designed based on a former industrial building.

His work focuses on a constant process of gathering, recovery and elaboration of history and art. He combines and reworks a wide iconographic archive of universal images, both abstract and figurative, from antique and contemporary scenes, defined by art criticism as "Theatre of memory".

Since the beginning of his artistic career, in 1987, [1] Pignatelli has painted his now famous Roman and Greek statues, classical heads of Aphrodite and Diana, mythological figures of gods, heroes and emperors, besides skylines of New York skyscrapers, Renaissances squares, Alpine landscapes and icons of modernity such as Second-World-War airplanes, ocean-liners and steam trains. [2]

Luca Pignatelli's artistic journey is underpinned by his own fascination and exploration of archaeology and mythology. [3] (...) From the faces of Attic statues to a Sixties Ferrari (...) Pignatelli could have been a film-maker, but he is an artist of material things". [4]

Pignatelli is also renowned for his research and use of railway wagon tarpaulins, woods, papers, metals and rugs: diverse and recovered materials which he reworks through tears, cuts and stitchings.

Since the Eighties he has become firmly established and his work has been exhibited in Italy and internationally, hosted by prestigious museums, showcasing impressive large-scale paintings and site-specific installations.

Among his exhibitions we cite: in 2009, his solo show "Atlantis" at Musée d’Art Modern et Contemporain in Nice and the participation to the Italian Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. [5] In 2011, his works was exhibited in Rome at the National Institute for Graphic Art. [6]

In 2014 the Capodimonte Museum in Naples hosted his show titled "Luca Pignatelli", resulting in the donation of the large-scale painting Pompei to the permanent contemporary art collection of the museum. [7] The Uffizi Gallery in Florence hosted "Migrants" [8] in the Vasari Corridor in 2015.

Most recently, after John Currin's and Glenn Brown's monographic retrospectives, Bardini Museum in Florence hosted "Senza Data", a breakthrough exhibition specifically conceived for the halls of the museum.

Through the decades the artist has received a wide recognition from the art world and respected critics have written about his artworks, including Donald Kuspit, Achille Bonito Oliva, Sergio Risaliti, Carlo Arturo Quintavalle, Marina Fokidis.

Work

Pignatelli's imagination feeds on antiquities, nature, and the connection between the concepts of Time and History. While his first production conveyed the perception of a looming menace, of the quiet moment announcing a disaster, [9] his later work is often characterized by a sense of universality and a more complex historical reflection.

The City and the History of Art represent for the artist a sort of permanent setting to human events, but nonetheless a dimension where Pignatelli engages his artistic research, operating analogies as well as modifications.

The artist is driven to visit warehouses, storage areas, military depots and large building sites, towards which he has always harbored an attraction and curiosity.

He is fascinated by the anonymous architectures of port cities, with their construction sites and movement of goods; by the works of Vignola, Loos and Mies van der Rohe, encountered during his travels across European cities; by Milan, his native city and place of choice; and with New York, where he sojourned for long periods since 1986.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Collective exhibitions

Museums and collections

Luca Pignatelli's works are included in the following permanent collections:

Other projects

Luca Pignatelli is often invited to participate in conferences and debates about art and architecture in universities and institutions. Some of his latest lectures include:

Bibliography

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References

  1. Galleria Antonia Jannone - Disegni di architettura, "Luca Pignatelli. Immaginazione, paesaggi e architetture", 1987, Milan. http://www.antoniajannone.it/mostre/luca-pignatelli.-immaginazione-paesaggi-e-architetture-testi-di-m.de-michel
  2. Simonetta Golia, da http://www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/MiBAC/sito-MiBAC/Contenuti/MibacUnif/Eventi/visualizza_asset.html_1275939881.html: "L’atemporalità e il metalinguaggio palesati oggi da Luca Pignatelli nella visualizzazione del suo lavoro, ci permettono di confrontare i nostri saperi con quelli di luoghi e culture lontane nel tempo e sentirli più vicini".
  3. Donald Kuspit, Between reverie and dream, Generous Miracles Gallery, New York, 2000. "(...) Pignatelli is an archeologist in spirit. (...) [He] excavates familiar images from unfamiliar past, presenting them in all their morbid transience, which he monumentalizes, confirming their archetypal significance".
  4. Antonina Zaru, in Luca Pignatelli, a c. di Achille Bonito Oliva, Milano, Charta, 1999
  5. "Per fortuna c'è un'interessante "Battaglia di Lepanto" di Luca Pignatelli", Gillo Dorfles su Corriere della Sera, mercoledì 10 giugno 2009.
  6. "Luca Pignatelli. Icons Unplugged", Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Roma, 2011.
  7. "Arte contemporanea".
  8. "Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, Luca Pignatelli: the Antique as Difference and Repetition, pag. 46, Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze, 2015: "The title: Migrants. First of all because these pieces obviously, have travelled a long way to end up in the collections of the West, but above all because they are traces of narrative, of stories that are evoked by their names".
  9. Donald Kuspit, Between raverie and dream, Generous Miracles Gallery, New York, 2000. "Pignatelli deepens the mood of loneliness by adding to it a note of terror, making it more tragic"