Dogs, sheep and bulls. Hills, cypresses, caves, houses and clouds. Bucolic settings where skulls and crosses create meaningful dialogues while following the sound of chiming bells. Timeless presences and figures, put before us as a reminder of the elusive and ineffable appearance of all that deserves to be considered authentic. These and many other dialectic encounters create Enzo Cucchi’s imagery, a void opened for the mindscape traveller, for the brave ones who decide to dive into a world made of reckless experiments and iconographic references.
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Incredibly cultured, Enzo Cucchi is to be considered one of the highest standards from the 1980’s Italian scenario, with a research that brought him close to the meanders of painting in its purest form. Coming from a small town, Morro d’Alba, Cucchi soon moved to Rome and found himself in contact with Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Mimmo Paladino and the other components of the Transavantgarde movement, a group of painters in which he can be seen as the most perpetually visionary of all. The strongly referencial environment offered by Rome, allowed the artist to feel a deep connection with the beauty of Italian art history and with that lost mythology which is to be rediscovered and translated to the contemporary.
Cover image: Enzo Cucchi, Musica Ebbra, 1982. Oil on canvas; Enzo Cucchi, La Deriva del Vaso, 1984-85. Oil on canvas and gesso elements.
Enzo Cucchi’s research doesn’t aim to solve enigmas and problems, it creates numerous doubts, mysteries and stories, in which the viewer can let himself go and get in touch with the intrinsic magma that is inside all of the created. Deep hues and violent tones, give birth to a stage where a powerful and symbolic past creates a variety of mindscapes, in which the viewer is encouraged to become a mind sailor; to lose himself and his certainties, in order to find new paths and inedited interpretations. In Enzo Cucchi’s paintings orientation is lost, there are no pre-determined roots to follow, no more order, but instead doubts and experimentations. A choice made by the painter to keep painting alive, to embrace the complexity of sublime beauty, and avoid to be enslaved by the simplicity of what Cucchi refers to as the merely decorative image. The artistic manner is not subject to the laws of the natural world, it defies gravity and rejects it, accepting that casual movement that is embodied by the fallen angel and his “clinamen”, where the fall itself is never a straight and pre-determined root, and its direction is constantly changed by the surge of the unexpected.
A powerful artistic persona, giving birth to a courageous and expressive image that does not homologate to the eye, giving space to the beauty that hides behind the Veil of Maya, enhancing the greatness of the past through its mysterious appearance and its interference with the present. Enzo Cucchi is one of those painters who lives and works following Nietzsche’s belief that after all, “in art there is a form of joy that carries within itself the pleasure of disruption”.
Cover image: Enzo Cucchi, Un Quadro che Sfiora il Mare, 1983. Oil on canvas.
Written by Mario Rodolfo Silva
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