All dressed in black and with gray hair, Enzo Cucchi walks around the Culturgest gallery, hands behind his back; He looks around at his still disorganized works of art looking for the right place, and exclaims: “Let’s have a beautiful exhibition in difficult times!” The Italian doesn’t elaborate on what he means by that, he just lets the idea hang in the air. And, deep down, that’s a bit what his pieces – paintings, sculpture, drawings… – do too.
The exhibition’s curator and visual arts programmer at Culturgest, Bruno Marchand, uses the word “mythographic” to describe Cucchi’s work. In almost all of his pieces there is “a suggestion of a narrative”, but the artist does not feel that he has to implement it, he does not even worry about it, and this mission passes to the beholder. What happened to that eagle to be inverted like that, with its paws in the air? Where is that boat going? What is that butterfly doing on a giraffe’s nose?
Between paintings, sculptures and drawings, all of Enzo Cucchi’s works in this exhibition at Culturgest were created in this century. Photo: António Jorge Silva
Self-taught when it comes to visual arts techniques, Enzo Cucchi, born near Ancona, 74 years ago, began to assert himself in the late 1970s. Before, his artistic production involved more of the words of poetry. And it’s easy to look at his artwork as familiar with the mysteries, rhythms, and silences of poems. Always associated with the Italian artistic current that would become known as “transvanguarda” (a name coined by critic and art historian Achille Bonito Oliva), Cucchi returned to an art that was often figurative, and with strong colors, after the minimal arte povera of the 60s. .
Sem title, 2010. Photo: Pietro Traversa
In 1986, he had solo exhibitions at the Center Pompidou, in Paris, and at the Guggenheim, in New York. In Portugal (where he is represented by Galeria Madragoa), this is his first exhibition at a major institution. In addition to the works, all carried out in this century, Halfdogthis exhibition includes the section The Bookseller and the Artistwith books and catalogs from many eras dedicated to his work (some of them true works of art).
GUIDED TOURS: With Ana Gonçalves and Maria Sassetti, 20 Apr, 25 May, 29 Jun, at 5pm.
Enzo Cucchi – Mezzocane > Culturgest > R. Arco do Cego 50, Lisbon > until 30 Jun, Tue-Sun 11am-6pm > €5