A mesmerising, double-sided window into the ‘programmed’ paintings of two radical 20th-century Italian artists, Lucia Di Luciano & Giovanni Pizzo, featuring never-before-seen works.
To celebrate their unique contributions to abstract art which went unrecognised for decades, Lucia Di Luciano & Giovanni Pizzo: Selected Works charts the artists’ creative evolution with paintings ranging from the ‘60s through now, focusing on new works. This vibrant progression illuminates their movement from a strict practice guided by mathematical computations and permutations in black and white, through wilder experimentations in colour. Throughout their working lives, Lucia and Giovanni were devoted to their daily painting practice, creating a rich archive; for the first time, this collection presents their work together in a single volume. They worked under the same roof in studios separated by a concrete wall. Presented in dos-à-dos binding, Lucia Di Luciano & Giovanni Pizzo offers two books in one with the division of the sides of the book recalling their artistic environment.
‘Lucia and Giovanni met amongst the easels of the life drawing class at the Academy in Villa Medici in 1956’, notes editor Fabio Cherstich in his introduction. One of Apartamento’s long-standing contributors, Fabio interviewed the artists in their home in Formello for Apartamento issue #31. His expert selection of paintings draws on a long-time friendship with the artists, exploring their varied periods and highlighting their incredibly productive and ever-experimental career. The book also includes an exclusive personal account by artist Nathalie Du Pasquier, and a lyric text by the late Giovanni; ‘Almost imperceptible is the fact that this species of cold geometric and mathematical process could manifest itself as a light lace, like a fabric made of the threads of imagination’. Lucia Di Luciano & Giovanni Pizzo is dedicated to his memory, conserving his incredible, poetic vision of their work; ‘Other times, swarms of little black squares resemble the shifting clouds of starlings in the September skies of Rome’.
close
