Luca Pignatelli

Luca Pignatelli was born in Milan in 1962, where he lives and works. He is son of the renown painter and sculptor Ercole Pignatelli. Luca acquired from his father his passion for art and the painter’s technique. His approach to the world of images is inspired by architecture, where the artist realized the analogy between the architectural composition and painting. He created a series of landscapes, characterized by a poetic vision of a threatened world. His first exhibitions in Milan anticipated his personal exhibition of 1991 at Leighton House Museum in London, which was opened before his participation at the Michetti Award, in Francavilla al Mare (1988). In these works the dark tones are accompanied by a great attention to architectural details, in a suspended atmosphere that will find its most successful expression in the choice of the medium on which the artist fixes these memories: the sheeting rail of the Thirties. The dark figures of the early years became gradually lighter. The artist’s later works were enveloped by particular details from the his conception of memory: the first trains and the Aphrodite portraits appeared, enriched by the charm of drapery that overtop them and by the seams of hemp which accentuate their poetic dimension. Luca Pignatelli’s 1998 exhibition at Poggiali e Forconi Gallery was the first full summary of Pignatelli’s years of research, guided by the visionary realism of war planes, trucks and locomotives, described as symbols of power and metaphors of his idea of time. Pignatelli’s participation at the Basel Art Fair, the dedicated cover of the magazine Art in 1996, and receiving the Cairo Communication prize in 2000 focalized his importance as an artist. In 1999 he exhibited at the Capricorno Gallery in Capri, in San Francisco at the Limn Gallery, in Milan at the Mudima foundation, introduced by Achille Bonito Oliva, and in the following year in New York. In this last exhibition’s catalogue a critical text was written by Donald Kuspit. In 2002 Pignatelli was invited by Marco Di Capua at the Museo del Corso in Rome. He also exhibited at the Museo della Permanente in Milan at the Cairo Comunication prize, and at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Udine, introduced by Luca Beatrice and Alessandro Riva. The Milanese critic indicated him as one of the leading artists, along with Giovanni Frangi, in the exhibition The new Italian art scene, arriving at the Venice Biennale in 2003. The artist enriched his research on modern architecture with the study of the archaeological surveys of Roman and Pompeian temples, as witnessed by the official catalogue of the Venice Biennale. In the artist’s frequent travels to New York (as he had already been internationally appreciated) he got in touch with personalities such as Carlo Maria Mariani, who had been living in the U.S. for many years. An artistic fellowship was born from their friendship and through it the exhibition On The Appian Way in Florence, at the Poggiali e Forconi gallery, in May 2004, was born. In 2005 Luca Pignatelli exhibited at the Daniel Templon Gallery in Paris and in 2006 at the Davide Di Maggio Gallery in Berlin, at White Box and Ethan Cohen Fine Arts in New York. In 2009 he successfully participated in the 53rd edition of the Venice Art Biennale.