Piccolo Arcobaleno, 1971

Lucio Del Pezzo  

Lucio Del Pezzo (Naples, 1933), a Neapolitan artist, a leading figure in Object Painting. Born and raised in Naples, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Del Pezzo was part of a small nucleus of intellectuals who gravitated around the magazine Sud Documento, a newspaper linked to the Milanese nuclear movement. In 1958, with a group of academy colleagues, he founded the '58 Group, which aspired to a recovery of the local iconological tradition through the breaking of traditional schemes. He moved to Milan in the 1960s and began a new phase of his artistic research, moving from a predominantly material painting to an architectural atmosphere that takes up the themes of metaphysics. The works of this period are characterized by a playful and light-hearted character, aimed at ironizing modern society, consumerism and pop, emphasizing the strengths and weaknesses of everyday life. The strength of his activity has always been his exceptional manual ability, which allowed him to combine creativity with the practice of craftsmanship, creating objects that can be considered the plastic-chromatic translation of a metaphysical atmosphere. In his works we can find figural emblems, such as triangles, circles, cones, or in a more narrative connotation targets, pins, fragments of cornices. These details served to denote iconic elements in his paintings, emphasizing the continuous tension between the playful, playful, mocking and structural, morphological, compositional aspects. In 1965 he participated in the inaugural exhibition of Studio Marconi, with which he initiated an intense relationship of collaboration. Since 1984 he has been teaching "Experimental Research on Painting" at the New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where he lives and works.