Luca Pignatelli

Luca Pignatelli was born in Milan in 1962. His relationship with art began at home, where his father, a painter and sculptor, had his studio. A son of art, he studied architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan. The study of architecture forms an important basis for the development of his research, both from a methodological and iconographic perspective. In 1987, he participated in his first solo exhibition at the Milanese gallery of Antonia Jannone, curated by Mario de Micheli and Daniele Vitale. Bound to the concept of the sedimentary growth of history, Pignatelli considers the relationship between painting and time in a particular way, through the coexistence of elements and forms that can be attributed to different eras in his work. His works, characterized by the use of unconventional media such as railway canvases, ancient cards, and industrial materials, give rise to an imaginary suspended between industrial archaeology and classicism. The artist tends to overlay his own selection of images, icons of the collective memory, drawn from a kind of universally known repertoire. Since 1987 to the present day, Pignatelli has consolidated his artistic path and commitment by exhibiting both in Italy and abroad in important museum institutions and private galleries. Luca Pignatelli’s artistic research is suspended between the fascination of archaeology and the exploration of myth. His painting lives on the dichotomy between the admired and poignant gaze of classicism and the dusty folds of critical inquiry into the mythical elements of the contemporary.