Enzo Cucchi

Enzo Cucchi is an Italian painter and sculptor who was a central figure in the Transavanguardia movement of the 1980s. Working against the art world’s adoration of Conceptualism in this era, Cucchi and his contemporaries such as Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia and Mimmo Paladino sought to reintroduce figuration into painting and sculpture, generating a particular strain of Italian Neo-Expressionism. Cucchi’s large scale oil paintings conjure surreal, otherworldly tableaux, rendered in vivid hues. Charcoal lines add dramatic flair to his rural dreamscapes containing isolated hands, flames, livestock and tools. During this period, The New York Times described Cucchi as an artist “who waves his paintbrush like a magician’s wand”. Alongside painting, Cucchi is also an avid poet, producing novel texts and prose for many of his exhibitions. He has also continually worked outside the confines of gallery walls, producing outdoor sculptures for Brueglinger Park in Basel in 1984, a fountain for the garden of the Museo d’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato in 1988 and a fountain in the center square of his home town, Morro d'Alba.