Background
Cucchi was born in Morro d'Alba, Italy, on November 14, 1949.
Cucchi was born in Morro d'Alba, Italy, on November 14, 1949.
Enzo Cucchi's talent for paintings was noted and lauded in his early years. Although he was more interested in poetry. He was an autodidactic painter.
Because of his interest in poetry, Enzo Cucchi frequently visited poet Mino De Angelis, who was in charge of the magazine Tau. Through La Nuova Foglio di Macerata, a small publishing house, Cucchi got acquainted with art critic Achille Bonito Oliva, who was a central figure in the artist‘s prospective career. La Nuova Foglio di Macerata published in its catalogues writings of artists, including Cucchi's "Il veleno è stato sollevato e trasportato!" in 1976.
Cucchi's constant trips to Rome in the mid-seventies revived his interest in visual arts. Enzo Cucchi migrated to Rome, temporarily abandoned poetry and dedicated himself entirely to painting. Here Cucchi met different artists there, such as Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, Mimmo Paladino and Nicola de Maria. They started to work in close contact and to establish dialectical and intellectual dialogues.
Italian critic and curator Achille Bonito Oliva was the first to name this group of Italian artists of the seventies as Transavanguardia. The official group officially appeared in 1980. The term Transavanguardia became an idiom for the art of this young generation following the Avant-garde art of the sixties.
The representatives of the Transavanguardia-group have different working methods. Their identity as a group was independent of rules or any binding language of expression. Cucchi's art was characterized by forms suggestive of the landscape, legends and traditions of his native region. Enzo Cucchi depicted nature, history and culture in a playful relationship with our technical world. He used symbols like a train or an ocean-liner and employed colour in terms of idea, expansion and motion rather than for pictorial sensation. His works are often accompanied by poetic texts some of which even have been published.
The artist has maintained a co-operative relationship with gallery owner Emilio Mazzoli in Modena and with Bruno Bischofberger; they had represented him since 1981 and since 1995 exclusively worldwide. From 1981 till 1985 Gian Enzo Sperone often exhibited Cucchi‘s works in his galleries in Rome and New York.
Enzo Cucchi’s Artist File includes three exhibition catalogues with text and reproductions of drawings and paintings shown in Germany (1982), Spain (1989), and Italy (1984). Cucchi had received his recognition in the United States by 1982, when his early artworks were first displayed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Italian Art Now: An American Perspective, 1982 Exxon International Exhibition. Seven artists were selected for the show, including Cucchi, to represent the scope of contemporary Italian art.
In 1986 Cucchi held a solo retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum. Meanwhile, his sculptural practice expanded significantly in the brief period between the two exhibitions. Cucchi‘s varied interests explained his participation in several unusual exhibitions. For example, he has made outdoor sculptures for the Brueglinger Park in Basel in 1984, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humblebaek, Denmark in 1985, a fountain for the garden of the Museo d’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecc, in Prato in 1988 and the Fontana d‘Italia at York University in Toronto. In addition, he also created a fountain in the centre square of his home town, Morro d'Alba.
Enzo Cucchi contributed to the Lucio Amelio's contemporary art collection in the Royal Palace of Caserta after a terrible earthquake of 1980. Between 1992 and 1994 Cucchi worked in collaboration with architect Mario Botta on the chapel built on Monte Tamaro near Lugano, Switzerland.
Cucchi had close relationships with poets and writers like Goffredo Parise, Paolo Volponi, Giovanni Testori, Alberto Boatto, Ruggero Guarini, and Paul Evangelisti. The artist made illustrations for their books while they wrote on his art. Enzo Cucchi was also active in the field of stage design; he designed costumes and sets for productions such as Rossini‘s and Respighi‘s La Bottega Fantastica at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro and Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea, both in 1986, Puccini‘s Tosca at the Teatro dell‘Opera in Rome, from 1990-1991, Pennisi‘s Funeral of the Moon in Gibellina, in 1991 and an adaptation of Erasmus‘ In Praise of Folly, in 1992. In 1996 Cucchi designed the curtain for the Teatro la Fenice in Senigallia as well as a mosaic on the sidewalk in front of La Rotonda al Mare.
Enzo Cucchi currently lives and works in Rome and Ancona.
Enzo Cucchi is widely known for his revival of figurative drawing and symbolism and one of the pioneers of the Transavanguardia. He was once described in the New York Times as an "artist who waves his paintbrush like a magician’s wand."
His work has been exhibited at prominent galleries, museums and cultural sites all over the world, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate in London, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
