Luca Pignatelli. Works On Paper

A monograph devoted to works on paper by contemporary Italian artist executed from 2003 to 2015.
As explained by Danilo Eccher in his essay "the concept of 'drawing' in Pignatelli's work is inadequate and reductive, since the language he uses when he works on paper is actually 'painting': while both dimensions and support change, the orthography and syntax of his art do not register any transformation. The critical categories that are applied to the interpretation of his painting are the same that help us to orient ourselves with his drawings. We are not faced with "preparatory studies" or with "sketches", there is never a superficial trial, even when the risks of experimentation and research invigorate the work." Introduced by a foreword by Danilo Eccher, the book presents essays by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, Elena Lydia Scipioni, Arianna Bona, Anna Musini, Luca Beatrice, Luca Doninelli, Achille Bonito Oliva, Donald Kuspit, Marina Fokidis, Angela Tecce, Michele Bonuomo, Salvatore Veca, Antonella Renzitti, and the catalogue of the works divided into six sections (Works on Paper; Architectures and Landscapes; Trains; Cosmographies; Standard; Italian Tapestries).
As a painter capable of facing the challenge posed by large scale works, Luca Pignatelli (Milan, 1962) normally uses anomalous supports that have an innate pictorial quality such as tarpaulins, wood and iron, and assembled pieces of paper onto which he applies his repertoire of images; this 'catalogue' of disparate images includes mechanical devices, ships, planes, urban landscapes and objects that contain echoes of the ancient world such as the ruins of statues and finds.
Towards the mid 1990s he began using tarpaulins from goods trains that had travelled the railways of Europe; the tarpaulins were re-sewn or patched up, torn by the never-ending journeys, but they froze history within them, opening up 'windows' onto other journeys towards the world of art. His poetics includes photography as an rapid means of citing icons that once belonged to a golden past.
The monumental sculptures of Roman emperors and the horse-drawn chariots, which are decontextualised and placed on canvases employing various techniques and solutions, become an important part of his iconography.
Since the 1990s the work of Luca Pignatelli has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries all over the world.

Danilo Eccher is an Italian art critic and curator.