{"id":3701,"date":"2022-02-08T12:35:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-08T12:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/?p=3701"},"modified":"2022-02-07T09:36:29","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T09:36:29","slug":"domeico-gnoli-this-is-not-an-armchair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/domeico-gnoli-this-is-not-an-armchair\/","title":{"rendered":"Domeico Gnoli: This is not an Armchair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the Sixties, Rome was an exciting city: art, cinema, theatre, and literature were in full swing. Excellent personalities such as Giorgio De Chirico\u00a0Pictor Optimus<\/em>, gallerist Plinio de Martiis and the artists of Piazza del Popolo or international figures like Balthus and Twombly hung around. Domenico Gnoli<\/strong> joined historical memory and art to innovation. Unfortunately, he prematurely died when he was only thirty-seven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VIRTUOSITY ON PAPER<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Born in Rome in 1933 and passed away in New York in 1970, Gnoli became famous with his graphic design activity back in the Fifties, as a scenographer, first (The Merchant of Venice in Zurich, As You Like It in 1955 in London) and then as a drawer, illustrator, and printmaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His engravings for the theatre showed a Dal\u00ec-like relentlessness and the influence of Fabrizio Clerici and Eug\u00e8ne Berman with hints of mannerism and architectural baroque. He developed visual textures of stories, comedies, and projects, permeated of kaleidoscopic, slightly ironic quotations, into scenography. An acute sensibility for the contemporary marked his illustrations for Fortune<\/em>, Glamour<\/em>, Holiday<\/em>, Show Magazine<\/em>, Sports Illustrated, <\/em>or Playboy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

VIEW OF THE EXHIBITION \u201cDOMENICO
GNOLI\u201d, FONDAZIONE PRADA, MILAN.
PHOTO: ROBERTO MAROSSI. COURTESY:
FONDAZIONE PRADA. ON THE WALL,
LEFT TO RIGHT, PUBLISHING AND
WORKS ON PAPER: POSTER OF CH\u00c9RI,
BY COLETTE, DIRECTED BY ANDR\u00c9
BARSAQ, ITALIAN COMPANY FOR
THEATRE, TEATRO ELISEO, ROME, 1951;
SCENOGRAFIA FANTASTICA 4, 1952;
SCENOGRAFIA FANTASTICA 8, 1952;
SAGITTARIO 2 (GRUPPO SAGITTARI),1952.
IN THE CABINET, LEFT TO RIGHT: IL
MAGAZZENO, 1950; CATALOGUE OF
EXHIBITION \u201cITALIAN ENGRAVINGS\u201d,
SASSARI, 1951; INVITATION TO THE
EXHIBITION \u201cDOMENICO GNOLI.
DRAWINGS\u201d: LA CASSAPANCA GALLERY,
ROME, 1951; SCENA DI NOTTE, FIFTIES;
SKETCH FOR CH\u00c9RI, 1951<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Living between Italy and New York, he developed a close-knitted network of friends and professional relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FROM INK TO ACRYLIC: THE MAGIC OF THE ORDINARY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As far back as in the Sixties, Gnoli turned to the painting. He became famous for his metaphysical and surrealist works imbibed with the Italian tradition from Masaccio to Piero della Francesca, through Piranesi and to Carr\u00e0, De Chirico, and Morandi. His works were\u00a0close-ups<\/em>\u00a0of home furniture, everyday objects, and human bodies that, thanks to acrylic, sand, and glue mixed up together allusively on the canvas, conveyed a secret that Gnoli intended to unveil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving from the classical tradition to Pop Art, which was in full swing in New York in the late Fifties and arrived in Italy in the early Sixties, was not an easy task. Gnoli claimed his freedom of expression, kept some distance from the new trend on show at the Venice Biennale in 1964, and wrote, \u201cI\u2019ve always worked like I\u2019m doing now, but nobody saw because abstraction was the vogue. Only now, thanks to Pop Art, my painting has become comprehensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always use simple elements; I don\u2019t want to add or remove anything; I isolate and represent since I never intervene actively against the object. I can only feel the magic of its presence.\u201d French writer Andr\u00e9 Pieyre de Mardiargue reinforced the message, \u201cGnoli\u2019s pictorial style, when he describes common things, illuminates them, dignifies them while pop artists make them gross.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE EXHIBITION<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Fondazione Prada\u2019s exhibition\u00a0Domenico Gnoli<\/em>\u00a0shows a hundred paintings and two hundred drawings, sketches, and documents (photos, letters, writings). The setting, designed by Studio 2 X 4 of New York, develops on the two floors of the Podium with a concept recalling the atmospheres of last-century museums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Germano Celant, who planned the 2020 exhibition, pointed out how the artist expressed an egalitarian intention: a rematch of the unmeaningful and low-profile elements in the chart of values, the low and the secondary, the accessory and the minimal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Notes for an unfinished text, he declared, \u201clook, I\u2019m drawing a house here. Look, it is not my house, well, I realistically started from left, but as soon as I move to the right, the lines are not that straight. You can\u2019t even count the leaves and bricks \u2026 Then you linger on and, at this point, your feel compelled, and things start to change and keep on acting until you don\u2019t see the house anymore, only the sensations\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Sixties, Rome was an exciting city: art, cinema, theatre, and literature were in full swing. Excellent personalities such as Giorgio De Chirico\u00a0Pictor Optimus, gallerist Plinio de Martiis and the artists of Piazza del Popolo or international figures like Balthus and Twombly hung around. Domenico Gnoli joined historical memory and art to innovation. Unfortunately, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":25,"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[392],"class_list":{"0":"post-3701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-contemporary-art-en","8":"tag-contemporary-art-en"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3701"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3706,"href":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3701\/revisions\/3706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artstylemagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}