Lucius Del Pezzo or the Pompeii of Art

An article, in Art of june, traces the artistic career of Lucio Del Pezzo, a well-known exponent of Italian Pop Art. On closer inspection, the combination with Pop Art is very forced and arises only from the desire to classify the genre of belonging of the artist anyway. Del Pezzo's artistic language is closer to Metaphysics than to Pop Art. In fact, it is peculiar to Pop Art the celebration of iconic objects of consumption, but in the case of Lucio Del Pezzo the objects he inserts into the works are not objects of common use, but are references of his archaeological and architectural knowledge as well as a certain taste for esotericism such as spheres, triangles, cylinders, etc. They are therefore objects that come out of the closet of his memory and his knowledge, exhibits of his past as a scholar of archaeology and his passion for architecture and therefore for drawing. We can say that Del Pezzo's work represents a kind of "Pompei" of art. Del Pezzo's artistic career was brilliant and intense from the beginning, in fact he received the Carnegie International Award,prestigious award of the Museum of Pittsburg, in 1962 and therefore not yet thirty years old. In Naples he was one of the founders of the movement Documento Sud that later connected with the Milan nuclear movement for which in 1960 he moved to Milan and has his first solo at the gallery of Arturo Schwarz. He abandoned the expressionist and neo-dadaist painting of the beginnings to arrive at the geometric rigor of the forms and their essentiality. From this point on Del Pezzo will always remain faithful to this new and original artistic language that will open the doors of two Venice Biennials and international knowledge. He moved to Paris for a number of years in search of new stings and knowledge and on his return to Italy in the 1970s he staged two important anthology exhibitions at the Pilotta di Parma and the Rotonda della Besana in Milan. Other major exhibits were in 2000 at mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt and at the Castel dell'Ovo the following year in Naples.

Tags: Lucio Del Pezzo - Del Pezzo - Italian Pop Art - Carnegie International Award - Rotonda della Besana