Luigi Mainolfi, Città bianca, Color Etching, 1992

"White City"
color etching on Duchêne-Colombe paper
100x150 cm
signed and numbered by the artist on the back
n./90 copies
Giancarlo Sardella printworks
published edition year 1992


Biography

Luigi Mainolfi (Rotondi, February 16, 1948) is an Italian sculptor. Internationally known, he is one of the main representatives of the so-called post-conceptual sculpture, which imposed itself at the beginning of the 1980s. from the beginning he has been making sculptures using poor, natural materials (terracotta, plaster, wood, lava stone) and bronze castings. After studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, he was attracted to the artistic and cultural scene in Turin and moved there in 1973. During this period, he supported himself by working as a security guard at the Michelin factory near Corso Umbria, later closed. His first works, made between 1972-76, investigate the body and gesture: in his first exhibitions and performances, he presents casts of his own body in plaster that he lets consume in water causing the sculpture to transform and degrade, as happened in Cavriago in 1977, or he makes them plummet from above to the ground as in the performance at the Galleria civica d'arte moderna in Bologna that same year. In 2001 the artist was chosen as Italy's representative for an exchange between our country and Japan. He landed at the Sapporo Museum of Contemporary Art where he made swims in the water of Hokkaido and Columns of Sapporo for Mainolfi Park. Confirming the critical nature of his artistic journey, he receives several official awards: named a member of the National Academy of San Luca in 2007. On the occasion of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, the Palazzo Madama in Turin hosted from April to November 2011, in the Atrio Juvarriano, a large installation by the artist entitled Torino looking at the sea.Between 1979 and 1980 he made Campana at the Tucci Russo gallery in Turin and La sovrana inattualità at the Padiglione d'arte contemporanea in Milan in 1982. In the decade that followed, he presented large terracottas, with landscapes and subjects inspired by fairy tales (Nascita di orco Elefantessa in 1980). He participated in the Sao Paulo Biennale (1981); exhibited Alle forche caudine at the 40th Venice Biennale and at "Documenta 7 in Kassel," (1982); participated in the Biennale de Paris (1982) with Le basi del cielo (1981-82) and at the Venice Biennale (1986) exhibited the bronze Trionfo(Elefantessa, 1982). He participated in the 11th and 12th Quadriennale d'arte nazionale in Rome. It is drawing that accompanies all of Mainolfi's production. In 1987 he won the "superior prixe" at the 5th Henry Moore G.P. in Japan with the large bronze Giant City (1986) and was awarded the Michelangelo Prize for Sculpture (2007) given to him by the city of Carrara. In 1990 he had a solo room at the Venice Biennale where he installed Black Sun (water, wax, wood, 1988-89). In the following years, major solo shows and retrospectives include 1992, Galleria d'arte contemporanea, Rimini; 1994, Villa delle Rose, Galleria civica d'arte moderna, Bologna, and Galerie Hlavniho mèsta Prahy, Prague; 1995, Hotel de Galliffet, Paris; 1995, Promotrice di belle arti, Galleria civica d'arte moderna, Turin; 1996-97 Museo civico di Castelnuovo, Maschio angioino and Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Co