Giorgio Zucchini (Bologna, 1939), painter and installation artist, lives and works in Bologna. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and later taught both at the local Art Institute and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ravenna.

THE ARTIST
Zucchini made his debut in 1972, taking part in the group exhibition Prospettive 5 in Rome and holding his first solo show at Galleria Duemila in Bologna, where he exhibited again two years later. Notable solo exhibitions include Galleria San Fedele in Milan (1974), Galleria Pellegrino in Bologna (1976), Studio d’Arte Annunciata in Milan (1984), and in Bologna at Galleria Studio G7 and Galleria Spazia (1986). He also participated in important group exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including the historic show Anniottanta.

An eclectic figure, Zucchini belongs to the group of artists defined by critic Renato Barilli as the “Nuovi-Nuovi”. In the early 1970s his work combined traditional painting with elements of Arte Povera and conceptual art.

Towards the end of the decade, he developed the “camere ottiche”, visual devices conceived as theatrical spaces for viewing. From the 1980s onwards he returned to painting, understood as a materialisation of those earlier structures. His works now feature small objects, flowers and animals — fragments of memory that populate his compositions with delicate chromatic shadows, creating a sense of wonder. Backgrounds are soft and diffused, rendered in gentle greens, yellows and blues, contributing to an overall atmosphere of refined subtlety.

THE EXHIBITION
Zucchini’s work is deeply rooted in the spirit of the places where he was born and has always lived — spaces of both intimate and profound experience, shaped by memory, objects and recurring gestures. His painting evokes a personal Wunderkammer, where marginal objects, visual distractions and traces of a lost language emerge.

A major figure in contemporary art, Zucchini offers an example of a practice cultivated through silent, meditative processes. He has always painted in tempera, moving between large imaginative canvases and smaller formats in which he captures delicate details, achieving a continually renewed sense of wonder through matter, light and colour.

La Repubblica – Bologna 21 marzo 2017
La Repubblica – Bologna 24 marzo 2017
Dal blog di Renato Barilli

Giorgio Zucchini
Tempera
Curated by Guido Piacentini
Text by Laura Falqui
and Raffaele Milani

11 March 2017 > 17 June 2017

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