Luca Pignatelli

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

Biography

Luca Pignatelli was born on 22 June 1962 in Milan, Italy, where he still lives and works. In the early 1980s, he entered Politecnico di Milano to study Architecture, but started his artistic career soon after with his first solo exhibition in 1987 at the Galleria Jannone in Milan.

Pignatelli's early production is mostly figurative and possesses an architectural quality derived from his university studies. The artist's vast repertoire includes both buildings and natural elements, like towers and mountains; vehicles such as airplanes, trucks and boats; war scenes taking place over the dark ruins of a city; wild animals fighting, and the lonely stillness of a generic suburb.

During the 1990s, he exhibited his work mostly in Italy (Milan, Rome, Bologna). In 1991, he hosted a solo show at the Leighton House Museum in London. In 2000, Pignatelli won the first edition of the prestigious Milanese prize, Premio Cairo.

Over the last twenty years, Pignatelli has consolidated his artistic research, and his path is marked by exhibitions held by some of the most distinguished national and international institutions.

In 2008, he was invited by the National Archaeological Museum in Naples where Pignatelli completely covered the walls of one of the rooms with "Schermi", a series of works representing ancient Greek vases, and he also exhibited in the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.

In 2009, Pignatelli participated in the 53rd edition of the Venice Biennale, where he was present in the Italian pavilion with three works titled "La Battaglia di Lepanto", positively cited by Italian art critic Gillo Dorfles. In the same year, the artist had a solo show in Nice at MAMAC - Musée d'art moderne et contemporaine.

The last decade has seen some of Pignatelli's most successful exhibitions, marking his presence in the Italian art scene as an established artist with a wide recognition. in 2011, Pignatelli exhibited his works in Rome at the National Institute for Graphic Art.

In 2014, the Capodimonte Museum in Naples invited the artist to showcase his work in the contemporary wing of the institution's complex, more specifically in its Sala Causa, the hall where the museum started to exhibit the work of contemporary artists in the 1970s. Today, Pignatelli's monumental work, "Pompeii", is part of the Capodimonte Museum's permanent collection, as it was donated by the artist after the exhibition to be staged on top of the master staircase, next to a piece by artist William Kentridge. The same year marked another important milestone in the artist's career. He took part in "Ri-conoscere Michelangelo", a collective exhibition hosted by Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence to celebrate the 450th anniversary of Michelangelo's death. Here, Pignatelli's artworks Sculture/8788 (2014) and Analogie (2013) depicting Schiavo, Fauno Barberini, and Prigione Morente are placed closely to Michelangelo's masterpiece David. In 2015, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence invited the artist to exhibit his famous "Heads" (one of the series that the artist is most known for) in the Gallery of Portraits (also known as Corridoio Vasariano). A series of nine works on wood titled "Migranti" was exhibited in the spaces of the Vasarian Corridor and one of them, "Self portrait as Mithridates" was acquired by the museum and is not part of the permanent collection of portraits.

In 2017, Pignatelli's exhibited Persepoli for the first time. Persepoli is a mixed media on Persian carpet where a feminine head, derived from the artist's accustomed antique repertoire, is superimposed on an ancient carpet. This work sparked ample reactions in the art world and was controversially censored in the 2017 edition of the Maastricht Art Fair. The decision was never fully justified by the directional board of the fair. Only a couple of months later, Pignatelli brought "Persepoli" and the other carpets from that series to Venice and exhibited them at the historical Grand Teatro La Fenice in the show titled, "Persepoli. Riflessi del residuo".

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, 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 has visited for long periods since 1986.

Pignatelli is also a painter capable of facing the challenges posed by large scale works. He normally utilizes recovered and unexpected supports, pictorial in themselves: canvases and tarpaulins, wood and iron, assembled papers, onto which he operates applying his selection of images, icons of the collective memory taken from a kind of universally renown repertoire. His work explores images that are often of a lofty classical nature, but also urban or mountain landscapes, sometimes trains, planes, symbolic elements, employed by the artist to construct and deconstruct a new evocative visual repertoire.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

• "In un luogo dove gli opposti stanno", a cura di Sergio Risaliti. Galleria Poggiali, Firenze (2019);
• Luca Pignatelli, Villa La Versiliana, Marina di Pietrasanta (2019);
• "MuseOgrafica", Stamperia d'Arte Albicocco, Udine (2019);
• Senza Data, Stefano Bardini Museum, Florence (2019);
• Luca Pignatelli – Persepoli. Riflessi del residuo. La Fenice Theatre, Venice (2017);
• Luca Pignatelli – Giorgio Conti Foundation (Cucchiari Palace), Carrara (2017);
• Luca Pignatelli – Blue Note/Works on paper, GAM Galleria civica d’arte moderna e contemporanea, Turin (2015);
• Luca Pignatelli – Migranti, Uffizi Gallery, Florence (2015);
• Luca Pignatelli – Capodimonte Museum, Naples (2014);
• Luca Pignatelli – Off Paper, M77 Gallery, Milan (2014);
• Luca Pignatelli – Icons Unplugged, National Institute for Graphic Art, Rome (2011);
• Luca Pignatelli – Sculture/Analogie, Poggiali e Forconi Gallery, Florence (2010);
• Luca Pignatelli – Atlantis, MAMAC, Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice (2009);
• Luca Pignatelli – National Archeological Museum, Naples (2008);
• Luca Pignatelli – Paintings, India Theatre, Rome (2007);

Collective exhibitions

• "REVOLUTIONS 1989-2019. L'arte del mondo nuovo 30 anni dopo", a cura di Luca Beatrice, con la collaborazione di Corinne Carbone e Roberta Pagani. Castel Sismondo, Rimini (2019);
• "L'immagine è necessaria", Stamperia d'arte Albicocco, Udine (2019);
• "Lo strano colore del rosso", Circolo Bellano, Progetto ArchiviVitali (2018);
• Porti Possibili. Sei artisti per l'accoglienza - Santa Giulia Museum, Brescia (2019);
• Ascoltare bellezza, Biblioteca Classense - Sala del mosaico, Ravenna (2018);
• WORK IN PROGRESS. San Patrignano, la collezione, La Triennale di Milano, Milano (2018);
• Mediterraneo lo specchio dell'altro, Palazzo Reale, Milano (2018);
• Arte contro la corruzione, Casa Testori Associazione Culturale, Novate Milanese (2017);
• Imago Mundi - Contemporary Artist from Italy at Cini Foundation in Venice e Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin (2015);
• Fuoco nero – Materia e struttura dopo Burri, Palazzo della Pilotta, Parma (2014);
• Ri-conoscere Michelangelo, Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence (2014);
• The Jerusalem Foundation – Coexistence, Musei MAXXI, Rome (2010);
• Opere scelte, MACRO Museum, Rome (2007);
• 50° International Art exhibition, Venice Biennal, Mostre Extra 50 (2003);
• Sui Generis, PAC – Contemporary Art Pavilion, Milan (2000);
• Tokyo Travelling Exhibition, International Forum, Tokyo (1997); XII Quadriennale, Roma (1996);

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:

• "Make the difference. Create your future", contribution during the event by Associazione Mercurio at BASE (Milan), alongside twelve other personalities working in art, architecture, sports, photography and university teaching.
• Galleria M77, Milan, May 2017, "The idea of a sustainable revolution". Speakers: Luca Pignatelli, Luca Beatrice, Michele Bonuomo.
• Politecnico di Milano, January 2015, "Distruction of Construction". Speaker: Luca Pignatelli.
• Naples' Academy of Fine Arts, May 2014, "The sense of classical in contemporary art". Speaker: Luca Pignatelli.