All exhibitions
Eden. Far Planets
Marcello Lo Giudice
September 15 - October 21, 2017
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The Ekaterina Cultural Foundation presents Marcello Lo Giudice's solo show, Eden. Far Planets.
Marcello Lo Giudice was born in Taormina, Italy, in 1957. He graduated from the University of Bologna before attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where he studied under leading Italian Arte Informale artists, such as Emilio Vedova and Giuseppe Santomaso. However, while at university, Lo Giudice majored in geology, and his work as an artist is deeply rooted in this stage of his life when he studied the composition and structure of minerals, and their physical and chemical properties. It was these studies that inspired Lo Giudice to pursue a career as a serious artist.
If you take a closer look at Lo Giudice's paintings it becomes obvious that the artist has inherited his style and manner not only from the abstractionism tradition but also from the Arte Povera movement, which originated in Italy in the mid-1960s. The Arte Povera artists' "anti-museum" approach to their work resembled that of the avant-garde masters as they also strove to liberate art objects from the need to be exclusively shown at galleries and museums, to broaden the laws of exhibitions, that is, to diminish the power of art institutions. The term "Arte Povera", first introduced by Italian art historian and critic Germano Celant, referred to the media used by the artists - glass, fabric, paper and even garbage.
However, Lo Giudice's paintings differ from the works by Arte Povera artists in the way he approaches the very act of creation. Lo Giudice creates his landscapes by hand, painstakingly and meticulously, as though he worked not with the canvas, oil and palette knives, but with the microcosm where he accurately puts together tiny earth particles. Another feature that sets apart Lo Giudice's work from those made by his countrymen is their intrinsic lyricism and energy. The appeal of his paintings is largely due to his ability to depict pictures of nature in a balanced and subtle way, as if they were seen from a bird eye's view.
"Fantastic cartography", such was the spot-on definition that art critic Francesco Gallo gave to Lo Giudicie's paintings in the catalogue accompanying the artist's solo show held by Milan's Galleria del Naviglio in 1995. But even though he creates abstract, "cartographic" images, his works are not devoid of resemblance to nature. In the wrinkles of the dried paint, in the way the oil is applied to the surface, in the chiaroscuro of the canvas, one can discern mountains, river banks and lake shores, deserts and volcanos.
Apart from paintings, Lo Giudice also creates sculptures. For instance, in his Totem series, the artist used a mattress, or to be more precise, what is left of a mattress, as he pulled off its outer layers to reveal the metal framework and refine them by means of colour, idealizing both the world and humanity. This refined structure is ready to embrace a new world and new meanings as it emerges as a romanticized world where no natural disasters or historical tragedies are possible.
Marcello Lo Giudice was born in Taormina, Sicily, in 1957. In 1988, he graduated in geology from the University of Bologna. In 1989, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. He has taken part in numerous international exhibitions. In 2003 the artist's solo show was held at the Royal Fine Arts Society in Muscat, Oman. In 2001 - 2016, he created a series of geological landscapes. In 2009, he took part in the Arte Europea exhibition, held as part of the 53rd Venice Biennale. In 2011, he participated in the 54th Venice Biennale. In 2013, the artist contributed his work to the Red Cross. In 2014, his solo show was staged at the Unix Gallery in New York. His solo shows were also held in cities such as Monaco, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Geneva, Paris and Miami. In 2015, Lo Giudice was included in the list of top 500 contemporary artists by the French online art price database Artprice. In 2016, an exhibition of his paintings and sculptures was held at Miramare Castle near Trieste. In the spring of 2017, two major exhibitions of his work were held in the Marble Palace of the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and the National Museum of the 21st century Arts (MAXXI) in Rome.
