< Back Artists Loris Cecchini Loris Cecchini (Milan, 7 May 1969) began his artistic career moulding soft and ductile materials: plastic, resin, rubber and cellulose. Later he began printing photographs on minute and unusual supports such as chewing-gum paper, and without abandoning his moulding of materials, began exploring the numerous and little-known possibilities offered by computers, continuing his artistic quest through an exploration of the sense of the real in a perspective suspended between the natural and the artificial, using digitalised images and installations realised using sculptural elements. Cecchini creates veritable photographic sets with modelled objects which he then photographs. The results are large format photographic works, with a cut which recalls the cinema screen or the "widescreen" of the latest generation televisions. Both in his photographs and his sculptures, the revision of a broad idea of the “model” becomes a re-elaboration of familiar everyday forms, transferred into an altered vision which challenges the perception of the spectator. Through subtle digital elaborations, the artist superimposes shreds of reality on to physical/virtual scenarios reconstructed using models in the studio, creating different situations between the plausible and the paradoxical. The idea of modelling and paradox is found in the objects replicated on a real scale and reproduced in grey urethane rubber: like ghosts and shadows of themselves, the objects appear helpless, bent over on themselves, while taking on a character, an irony which renders them more human and less like objects. Franco Fontana Franco Fontana (Modena, 9 December 1933) began working as a photographer in 1961. In 1963 he exhibited his work at the International Biennial of Colour in Vienna and at various exhibitions in Italy and Europe over the following 5 years. It was in 1968, however, thanks to an exhibition in his home town of Modena, that he reached a turning point in his photographic quest. Fontana has "reinvented" colour, not only as a documentary but also as an expressive means, through a new - and at times provocative - analysis of both the natural and the structured landscape in the search for new signs, structures and chromatic surfaces which correspond to his creative imagination. This has allowed him to depict metaphysical atmospheric spaces, a cosmos otherwise unknown and improbable. Trees, clouds, people and shadows appear as portraits of ghosts within geometric and intensely coloured scenes. Fontana’s entire body of work and his importance at world level can be summed up in figures - over 40 books have been dedicated to him, published by Italian, French, German, Swiss, Spanish, American and Japanese publishers. He has exhibited his works in public museums and private galleries throughout the world, and has held more than 400 personal and group exhibitions to date. His works form part of important public collections; he has received important awards and recognitions, both in Italy and abroad, and has collaborated with the Georges Pompidou Centre and the Ministries of Culture of France and Japan. He is also artistic director of the Toscana FotoFestival. Famous for his colour photographs, nudes and landscapes which tend towards abstract forms, he received an honoris degree in design from the Polytechnic of Turin in 2006. Ugo Nespolo Ugo Nespolo (Mosso S. Maria, Vercelli, 1941) completed his artistic studies in Turin at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts. He lives and works in Turin and in New York. His debut on the Italian art scene in the Sixties was linked to Pop Art; through his later contact with Pistoletto and the future Conceptual and Arte Povera artists (Paolini, Zorio, Anselmo and Mondino) Nespolo would dedicate himself to an artistic quest which would take him in a more conceptual direction. Nevertheless, his work continued to display a marked sense of playfulness, his characteristic ironic signature. The Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, the Polish Film Institute in Warsaw, the Civic Gallery of Modern Art in Ferrara and the Pompidou Centre have dedicated many monographic events to him. Nespolo has maintained a constant relationship with America, which suggested new means of expression to him in the Sixties, although he reports having felt very close to the experiences of the European avant-gardes and Dadaism in particular. He experiments with unusual techniques (such as inlay) and materials, including precious wood, mother-of-pearl, ivory, alabaster, silver, leather and porcelain, resulting in highly personal creations. He boasts numerous experiences in the applied arts sector, including around 50 promotional images created for exhibitions and events including "Azzurra", the International Car Show in Turin and the National Sailing Federation. He has also created various opening and closing titles for the RAI, including “Indietro tutta" with Renzo Arbore, sets, etc. Nespolo is a global, almost Renaissance figure, a successful all-round artist rare in our times. Maurizio Galimberti Maurizio Galimberti (Meda, Milan, 1956) is an artist well-established on the Italian artistic scene, whose main focus is on experimental photography through the concept of rhythm and movement, typical of the Futurists and Cubists. He made his debut using a Widelux camera, and has consistently used Polaroid cameras for around ten years, becoming the creator of a specific movement. Galimberti, who uses different cameras and techniques, has linked his name to the use of instant film. The artist has dedicated a lot of attention to this genre of photography, realising individual photographs, manipulations during development, transfers, mosaic-style landscapes and portraits. In 1992 he was awarded the prestigious “Gran Prix Kodak Pubblicità Italia”, and in 1995 he realised a travelling exhibition of the series “I Maestri” for KODAK ITALIA, where he expressed another of the cornerstones of his artistic research through fragments of daily living charged with emotion and sentiment. He has created images for advertising and for the promotion of companies such as BELFE E BELFE, ROLEX, POLAROID, VARUK, FRATELLI POLLINI, SOLVAY, PERONI/APRILIA (campaign for the world motorcycling championships 1997), VICINI, IPA, RADIO STATION ONE, CAMST, MARTINO MIDALI, PHILIPS, L’OREAL, FERRARI Formula 1 racing team. For CARTIER he realised a performance for the presentation of the new jewellery collection at the Leopolda station in Florence in October 1999. He is “Visiting Professor” at the Domus Academy of Milan, the Italian Institute of Photography of Milan and the European Institute of Design of Turin, and holds numerous creative sessions during the most important Italian photographic workshops. He exhibited his work as the only photographer at the exhibition “La casa italiana” by Domus Academy for Pitti Immagine at the Fortezza da Basso, Florence in January 1997. Andres Serrano Andres Serrano (New York, USA, 1950) has always given an image of himself as a cursed artist and great provoker. In reality, his work appears complex and richly nuanced. Rebel genius par excellence, Serrano expresses his criticism in the subtle dichotomy which underpins his photographic images, glossy and perfect, terrifying and transgressive, rejecting the duplicity of the contemporary world and illustrating its interior uneasiness and obsessions. Ever since his debut at the beginning of the Eighties, the photographs of Andres Serrano have never failed to represent the most controversial and polemical issues of the convulsive world we live in. Religion, fanaticism, corporeity, xenophobia, illness and death have all been the object of his meticulous attention. What seems to be a form of provocation manifests itself as a vocation: that of treating issues and problems which regard us as human beings through images which set themselves apart for their beauty. Beauty is an essential component of Serrano’s work - through it the artist intensifies the tension which seduces the spectator with the forbidden lure of taboo themes. The efficacy of his images finds confirmation in the mechanisms of advertising: the use of a markedly Caravaggesque lighting, bright colours, the precision of the titles and most of all the use of a concise, but always eloquent language. Treading the thin line which separates the sacred from the profane, the moral from the immoral, right from wrong, Serrano’s work has gone beyond the limits of pure decorativism. The artist crosses the boundaries of the permissible – in the personal as much as in the social sphere – to lure and surprise his spectators, putting them in front of images which as a first impulse would cause those viewing to close their eyes, if they were not presented in a beautiful and picturesque manner. Andy Warhol     Jenny Holzer     Mel Ramos     Lawrence Weiner Andy Warhol (Pittsburgh, USA, 1928 – New York, USA, 1987), the son of a couple of Czech immigrants, studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology from 1945 to 1949, and began working as an advertisement illustrator in New York in 1950. Continues...     Jenny Holzer (Gallipolis, Ohio, USA, 29 July 1950) is an American visual artist, considered one of the main exponents of the most recent trends in conceptual and public art. Her work focuses on the positioning of brief texts in urban spaces using various supports Continues...     Mel Ramos (Sacramento, USA, 24 June 1935) is one of the few Pop artists who has made an incisive contribution, also in terms of popularity, to this current, despite not being part of the "first wave" group which included Warhol and Rauschenberg. Continues...     Lawrence Weiner (New York, USA, 10 October 1942) uses verbal language as a veritable sculptural material. In the late Sixties and Seventies he attracted the attention of international critics for his installations, books and theoretical reflections, becoming one of the central figures of conceptual art. Continues... Kings, Poets and Writers                   King James II of Scotland     John Hamilton     King Charles I     George Fullerton Carnegie James II of Scotland (1430 - 1460) was king of Scotland from 1437 until his death. Crowned in 1437 at just seven years old, he was constantly in battle just like his father, to oppose the power of the Scottish nobles who had taken sides against the power of the monarchy. Continues...     John Hamilton (1511 – 1571) became a monk in his youth, and soon became Abbot of Paisley. Following his studies in Paris he returned to Scotland, earning power and influence in a short space of time, succeeding David Beaton as Archbishop of St Andrews in 1546 and becoming treasurer of the kingdom during the same period. Continues...     Charles I (19 November 1600 - 30 January 1649) was king of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 27 March 1625 up until his death. He was the focus of much political and religious tension which exploded in the English Civil War. Continues...     George Fullerton Carnegie, son of John Milne and Mary Bower, was born on 27 October 1822 in Montrose, Angus, in Scotland and died on 16 February 1865 at the age of 42. Poet and illustrious scholar of his time, he was one of the most prominent members of the prestigious “Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews”. Continues...                     King James VI of Scotland and I of England     James Ballantine     King James III of Scotland     King James IV of Scotland King James VI of Scotland and I of England (Edinburgh 19 June 1566 – London 27 March 1625) was the first sovereign to rule, by way of dynastic union, over the three kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland at the same time. He ruled over Scotland with the name of James VI from 24 July 1587 Continues...     James Ballantine (11 June 1808 – 18 December 1877) was an important artist and author. Born in Edinburgh, he began his career as a painter. Following his studies in art he became one of the first to revive Gothic architecture and the art of painting on glass and is one of the pioneers of European design. Continues...     James III of Scotland (1451 - 1488), was king of Scotland from 1460 until his death. The son of James II of Scotland, he followed his father’s political line, resuming a bitter fight against the English, but was killed in a conspiracy by a number of Scottish nobles who had sided with the English king. He married Margaret, daughter of Christian I of Denmark and Norway, and was succeeded on his death by his first-born child James IV. Continues...     James IV of Scotland ((1473 - 1513), son of James III of Scotland, Stewart of Scotland, and Margaret of Denmark. Having succeeded his father in 1488 at only 15 years of age, he negotiated peace with the English (the issues of power which had arisen within the kingdom of Scotland had become much more serious) by marrying Margaret, daughter of Henry VII Tudor, acquiring for the Stuarts the right to succession to the English throne. Continues...                     William Graham     Gillo Dorfles             William Graham (1797-1877), well-educated and the author of many writings, was one of the most illustrious Scottish scholars of the XI century. He became Presbyterian Minister for the area of Coleraine and Casterton and held this position for four years, until his resignation in 1866.     Gillo Dorfles was born in Trieste in 1910; his father is from Gorizia (the family has resided in Friuli ever since the eighteenth century) and his mother is from Genoa. He spent his childhood in Genoa and his adolescence in Trieste, where he attended a classical high school, before going to university in Milan and Rome (a degree in medicine and a specialisation in psychiatry). Following his university education he continued to live in Milan, with the exception of long stays in Turin, Florence and Lajatico (near Volterra), and     frequent journeys abroad, almost always for congresses or other cultural initiatives (“visiting professor” at the universities of Cleveland, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, New York and others). He is a qualified lecturer and ordinary lecturer in aesthetics at the universities of Milan, Trieste and Cagliari, and ever since the Thirties he has worked extensively as an art and literature critic (“Rassegna d’Italia”, “Le Arti Plastiche”, “La Fiera Letteraria”, “Il Mondo”, “Domus” – of which he has been vice-director –,     “Aut Aut” – of which he has been editor-in-chief –, “The Studio”, “The Journal of Aesthetics”, etc.). Following the First World War he took up painting once more, founding the MAC (Movimento Arte Concreta) together with Munari, Soldati and Monnet, participating in all the activities of the movement until its dissolution, such as all the historical exhibitions dedicated to it (after 1980). In 1954 the Wittenborn Gallery of New York dedicated a personal exhibition to him. Continues...