Piero Guccione biography

- PIERO GUCCIONE PAINTER

 

Piero Guccione, born on 5 May 1935 in Scicli, a small town in eastern Sicily, was a multifaceted Italian artist, known for his career as a painter, engraver and illustrator .

From a young age, he showed a great passion for art, abandoning classical studies to dedicate himself completely to painting and drawing. After graduating from the Art Institute of Catania in 1954, he moved to Rome, where he came into contact with the neorealist painters of the Galleria Il Pincio , located in Piazza del Popolo.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Piero Guccione actively participated in paleoethnological missions in the Libyan Sahara desert, under the guidance of Professor Fabrizio Mori. The objective of these missions was the detection of rock paintings and graffiti of prehistoric Saharan civilizations. Thanks to this experience, the artist organized an exhibition of rock paintings at Columbia University in New York in 1961, which was subsequently also hosted in other important American universities.

Piero Guccione's artistic career officially took off on 23 April 1960, when he held his first solo exhibition at the Elmo Gallery in Rome. The exhibition was presented by the art critic Duilio Morosini and marks the beginning of a successful artistic journey. Over the years, Guccione participated in numerous shows and exhibitions both in Italy and abroad, consolidating his reputation as one of the greatest contemporary Italian painters.

Throughout his career, Piero Guccione stood out for his conceptual interpretation of painting, especially through his famous cycles of works on the theme of the sea. His marine views, characterized by a realistic but highly conceptual rendering, convey a feeling of tranquility and invite the viewer to reflection and meditation. The artist believes that the horizon line that unites the sky and the sea is able to evoke a sense of calm and inner connection.

Despite his success on a national and international level, Piero Guccione always maintains a strong connection with his homeland, Sicily. In 1979, he decided to return to Sicily, settling between Scicli and Modica, where he built a home-studio. This choice makes him a point of reference for other Sicilian artists, giving life to a group called Gruppo di Scicli, which shares the passion for painting and sculpture.

Throughout his career, he experiments with different artistic techniques, moving from oil painting to drawings and pastels. During the 1980s, he temporarily abandoned oil painting to devote himself mainly to drawings and pastels, creating works that explored themes such as the carob tree and the homage to Caspar David Friedrich , one of his favorite artists

Guccione's works have been exhibited in important artistic institutions, including the Venice Biennale , where he has been invited several times, and the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has received numerous awards and recognitions for his artistic career, including the Special Award for Culture from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers in 1999 and the Gold Medal from the Presidency of the Republic Italian in 2004.

After his death in 2018, his daughter Paola Guccione established the Piero Guccione Archive , an association dedicated to the promotion and cataloging of the artist's works. The archive organizes exhibitions and other initiatives to make Guccione's works accessible to the public, preserving his precious contribution to contemporary art.