Enzo Cucchi
Encyclopedia
Enzo Cucchi is an Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 painter. A native of Morro d'Alba
Morro d'Alba
Morro d'Alba is a comune in the Province of Ancona in the Italian region Marche, located about 25 km west of Ancona.Morro d'Alba borders the following municipalities: Belvedere Ostrense, Monte San Vito, San Marcello, Senigallia....

, province of Ancona
Province of Ancona
The Province of Ancona is a province in the Marche region of central Italy. Its capital is the city of Ancona. The province has an area of 1940 km² and a 2006 population of 465,906 in 49 comuni , see Comunes of the Province of Ancona....

, he was a key member of the Italian Transavanguardia movement, along with fellow countrymen Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente is an Italian and American contemporary artist. Influenced by thinkers as diverse as Gregory Bateson, William Blake, Allen Ginsberg, and J Krishnamurti, the art of Francesco Clemente is inclusive and nomadic, crossing many borders, intellectual and geographical.Dividing his time...

, Mimmo Paladino
Mimmo Paladino
Mimmo Paladino is an Italian sculptor, painter and printmaker.-Paintings and drawing:Mimmo Paladino was born Domenico Paladino in Paduli, Campania, southern Italy...

, Nicola De Maria, and Sandro Chia
Sandro Chia
Sandro Chia is an Italian painter and sculptor.A native of Florence, he was a key member of the Italian Transavanguardia movement, along with fellow countrymen Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Nicola De Maria, and Enzo Cucchi....

. The movement was at its peak during the 1980s and was part of a wider movement of Neo-Expressionists painters around the world.

Cucchi's first major Retrospective was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...

, New York 1986 and his works are held in numerous museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

 New York, the Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...

 London and the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

. Enzo Cucchi lives and works in Rome and Ancona.

Biography

Enzo Cucchi was born in 1949 in Morro d‘Alba, a farming village in the province of Ancona in central Italy. As an autodidactic painter Cucchi was lauded in his early years even though he was more interested in poetry. He frequently visited poet Mino De Angelis, who was in charge of the magazine Tau. Through La Nuova Foglio di Macerata, a small publishing house, he met with art critic Achille Bonito Oliva
Achille Bonito Oliva
Achille Bonito Oliva, is a recognized and respected Italian contemporary art critic, author of many essays on mannerism, and a professor of History of Contemporary Art at La Sapienza University in Rome...

, an important figure in the artist‘s prospective career. In its catalogues La Nuova Foglio di Macerata published writings of artists such as Cucchi's Il veleno è stato sollevato e trasportato! in 1976. Frequent trips to Rome in the mid-seventies revived Cucchi’s interest in visual arts. He moved to Rome, temporarily abandoned poetry and dedicated himself exclusively to the visual arts. Here Cucchi met with different artists such as Sandro Chia
Sandro Chia
Sandro Chia is an Italian painter and sculptor.A native of Florence, he was a key member of the Italian Transavanguardia movement, along with fellow countrymen Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino, Nicola De Maria, and Enzo Cucchi....

, Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente is an Italian and American contemporary artist. Influenced by thinkers as diverse as Gregory Bateson, William Blake, Allen Ginsberg, and J Krishnamurti, the art of Francesco Clemente is inclusive and nomadic, crossing many borders, intellectual and geographical.Dividing his time...

, Mimmo Paladino
Mimmo Paladino
Mimmo Paladino is an Italian sculptor, painter and printmaker.-Paintings and drawing:Mimmo Paladino was born Domenico Paladino in Paduli, Campania, southern Italy...

 and Nicola de Maria with whom he began to work in close contact and to establish dialectical and intellectual dialogues.

Achille Bonito Oliva was the first to name this young generation of Italian artists of the seventies as a group: In Flash Art Magazine, no. 92-93, 1979, he used the term Transavanguardia for the first time. The official proclamation of the Transavanguardia took place at the Venice Biennial of 1980. The term was an idiom for the art of this young generation following the Avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 art of the sixties. These artists no longer sought to evoke discomfort in the spectator by all means and to force him to go beyond the work to grasp it fully. This new generation did not follow the restless quest for progress that did not allow any consideration of past traditions and for devising a language with which artists could state their attitude, opposing the current political system and society‘s deceasing values.

The members of the Transavanguardia-group may have nothing in common but their native country – as it seems – since each artist has his own working method: There are neither rules nor any binding language of expression. Nevertheless we can find fundamental bridging elements such as motifs gathered from imaginable reality and the free use of past and present with no preclusion but with references open to all directions without any constrictions and with no obligation to invent anything new. Every artist found his own way to create images/works as ciphers with an open symbolism, enigmas with any solution or with various solutions. Cucchi radicalises painting practice, taking the picture as an opportunity to accumulate and combine various elements, figurative and abstract, explicit and allusive. He develops his own specific kind of symbolism with suggestive forms which are mostly somehow linked with the landscape, the legends and the traditions of his home-region but also through a rapturous richness of colour. Hence some works may evoke old myths and legends, but Cucchi uses them only to express his feelings and imaginations. Cucchi obtains a suggestive strength from nature, history and culture, which he shows in a playful relationship with our technical world, using symbols like a train or an ocean-liner and employing colour in terms of idea, expansion and motion rather than for pictorial sensation. Cucchi allows his image total freedom of movement in all directions. Evoking astonishment and confusion, Cucchi does not aim to name, quote or prove anything, his pictorial language may be related only to his personal wishes, dreams and hopes while at the same time he experiences with the impetus of anonymity and of the impersonal. His artwork is often accompanied by poetic texts some of which have been published.

From the beginning of the eighties on, Cucchi has been gaining international recognition as a representative of the new figurative expression. Aside from the numerous Transavanguardia- group-exhibitions, he had one-man-shows in galleries, museums and cultural sites all over the world.

Works

In the late 1970s, Cucchi’s highly original work conspicuously stood out in a scene dominated by conceptual art. Art critic and dealer Mario Diacono supported him by exhibiting his work in Italy and the United States. Since 1979 Cucchi has maintained a co-operative relationship with gallery owner Emilio Mazzoli in Modena and with Bruno Bischofberger
Bruno Bischofberger
Bruno Bischofberger is an art dealer and gallerist from Zurich, Switzerland, and a major figure in the international art market for several decades...

 who represents the artist since 1981 and in world wide exclusivity since 1995. Between 1981 and 1985 also Gian Enzo Sperone frequently exhibited Cucchi‘s work in his galleries in Rome and New York. Consequently his experimental expressionist style gradually became influential whereas he set out to expand the material qualities in his art by painting or drawing directly on walls, using ceramics, mosaic or painted images as a part of sculpture and by creating free installation spaces.

Cucchi‘s varied interests have led him beyond the bounds of ordinary exhibitions. He has made outdoor sculptures for the Brueglinger Park in Basel in 1984, and the Louisiana Museum in Humblebaek, Denmark in 1985, a fountain for the garden of the Museo d’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato in 1988 and the Fontana d‘Italia at York University in Toronto. Between 1992 and 1994 he collaborated with architect Mario Botta
Mario Botta
Mario Botta is a Swiss architect. He studied at the Liceo Artistico in Milan and the IUAV in Venice. His ideas were influenced by Le Corbusier, Carlo Scarpa, Louis Kahn. He opened his own practice in 1970 in Lugano.-Career:...

 on the chapel built on Monte Tamaro near Lugano, Switzerland, where Cucchi assisted with designing the interior of the chapel, mainly the main altar and the executed murals for the apse and nave. Cucchi enjoys close relationships with poets and writers like Paolo Volponi, Goffredo Parise
Goffredo Parise
Goffredo Parise was an Italian writer and journalist. He won the Viareggio Prize in 1965 and the Strega Prize in 1982. He was an atheist.-References:...

, Giovanni Testori
Giovanni Testori
"'Giovanni Testori'" was a major Italian writer, playwright, art historian and literary critic. His literary works are characterised by linguistic experimentalism, featuring both lexicon and syntax that mix and fuse elements of the Lombard dialect with French and English...

, Ruggero Guarini, Alberto Boatto and Paul Evangelisti. He has made illustrations for their books while they have written on his art.
Cucchi has also been active in the field of stage design: He has designed costumes and sets for productions such as Rossini‘s and Respighi‘s La Bottega Fantastica at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro and Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea, both in 1986, Puccini‘s Tosca at the Teatro dell‘Opera in Rome, from 1990–1991, Pennisi‘s Funeral of the Moon in Gibellina, in 1991 and an adaptation of Erasmus‘ In Praise of Folly, in 1992. In 1996 he designed the curtain for the Teatro la Fenice in Senigallia.

Exhibitions

Selected Exhibitions:
  • EMMA, Espoon Kaupunki, Finland, 2009
  • Museo Correr
    Museo Correr
    The Museo Correr is the civic museum of Venice, located in the Piazza San Marco, and is entered by the ceremonial stairway in the Ala Napoleonica at the western end of the Piazza opposite the church of San Marco at the other end...

    , Venezia, 2007
  • Academie de France à Rome, Villa Medici, Roma, 2006
  • Artium, Centro Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporaneo in Vitoria-Gasteiz, España, 2002
  • Mosaico nella Stazione Termini, Roma, 2000
  • Tel Aviv Museum of Art
    Tel Aviv Museum of Art
    The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is an art museum in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was established in 1932 in a building that was the home of Tel Aviv's first mayor, Meir Dizengoff. The Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art opened in 1959. The museum moved to its current location on King Saul Avenue in...

    , Tel Aviv, 1999 and 2001
  • Deichtorhallen
    Deichtorhallen
    Deichtorhallen, in Hamburg, is one of Europe's largest art centers for contemporary art and photography. The two historical buildings dating from 1911-13 are iconic in style, with their open steel-and-glass structures. It's architecture creates a backdrop for spectacular major international...

     Hamburg, Hamburg, 1999
  • Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen, 1997
  • Museo di Capodimonte
    Museo di Capodimonte
    The National Museum of Capodimonte is located in the Palace of Capodimonte, a grand Bourbon palazzo in Naples, Italy. The museum is the prime repository of Neapolitan painting and decorative art, with several important works from other Italian schools of painting, and some important Ancient Roman...

    , Napoli, 1996
  • Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo, 1996
  • Museo di Palazzo Reale Arengario, Milano 1995
  • Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turino 1993
  • Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, 1992
  • Carré d‘Art, Musée d‘Art Contemporain, Nîmes, 1991
  • Fundació Joan Miró
    Fundació Joan Miró
    The ' is a museum of modern art honoring Joan Miró and located on the hill called Montjuïc in Barcelona, Catalonia.-History:...

    , Barcelona, 1991
  • Wiener Secession, Wien, 1988
  • Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus
    Lenbachhaus
    The Lenbachhaus in Munich houses an art museum and is part of Munich's "Kunstareal" .- The building :The Lenbachhaus was built as a Florentine-style villa for the painter Franz von Lenbach between 1887 and 1891 by Gabriel von Seidl...

    , München 1987
  • Musée d’art moderne Centre Georges Pompidou
    Centre Georges Pompidou
    Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...

    , Paris 1986
  • The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
    Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
    The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...

    , New York 1986
  • Fundación Caja de Pensiones, Madrid; capc Musée d‘Art contemporain, Bordeaux, 1985
  • Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
    Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
    The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located directly on the shore of the Øresund Sound in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the most visited art museum in Denmark with an extensive permanent collection of modern and contemporary art, dating from World War II and up...

    , Humblebaek, 1985
  • Stedelijk Museum
    Stedelijk Museum
    Founded in 1874, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for classic modern and contemporary art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It has been housed on the Paulus Potterstraat, next to Museum Square Museumplein and to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam Zuid...

    , Amsterdam, 1983
  • Kunsthaus Zürich
    Kunsthaus Zürich
    The Kunsthaus Zürich houses one of the most important art museums in Switzerland and Europe, collected by the local Kunstverein, called Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, and holdings running from the Middle Ages to contemporary art, with an emphasis on Swiss art.Kunsthaus is also the name of the tram stop...

    , 1982, 1984 and 1988
  • Documenta
    Documenta
    documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...

     7, Kassel, 1982
  • Gallery Gian Enzo Sperone, Roma, 1981
  • Galerie Bruno Bischofberger
    Bruno Bischofberger
    Bruno Bischofberger is an art dealer and gallerist from Zurich, Switzerland, and a major figure in the international art market for several decades...

    , Zürich, 1981
  • Incontri Internazionali d‘Arte, Roma, 1977

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK