Lovay Fine Arts presents solo show by Italian artist Lucia di Luciano, key figure of 1960s abstract art who is still innovating at 92
Lovay Fine Arts proudly presents the solo exhibition titled ‘Unpredictable Expansions’ at their Geneva gallery space taking place from September 13th to November 3rd 2024. The private view of the exhibition will take place on the 9th of September.
Lucia di Luciano is an Italian artist born in 1933 in Siracusa, Sicily, living now in Rome, Italy. She was a key figure of the Arte Programmata movement in the 1960’s, an Italian avant-garde which pioneered computer art — integrating technology and programming to emphasize dynamic, algorithmically generated work. An established & acclaimed female artist now in her 9th decade, Luciano returns to the international art scene, having tracked the development of art and technology during this explosive period.
The artist has only recently begun showing her historic work after a long hiatus, participating in Cecilia Alemani’s 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, and with a first small showing of her contemporary practice at Lovay Fine Arts, Geneva in 2023. This absence from the spotlight coincides with the diversity of formal inventions Luciano has been exploring for the last 60 years–from her rigorous 1960’s Arte Programmata abstractions, to her recent shattering of the modernist grid into organic explosions.
Lovay Fine Arts unveils for the first time a distinctive series created between the period 2017 to 2021 — one of the most obsessive and idiosyncratic yet completed by the artist. In it, Di Luciano first prepared solid-coloured backgrounds on which she freely drew with a very thin ink pen, a kind of ligne claire. Through the use of diverse drawing typologies such as ornamentation, repetition, geometry, expressivity or pseudo-scribbling, she creates an abstract universe that unveils a rich interior landscape while connecting it with a broader history of art and expression.
If some of these organic constellations recall surrealist Automatic Drawing freed from rational control of the brain, the black line motifs become poetic traces, as if she uses the black lines as an abstract handwriting to articulate her own personal history of abstraction. Di Luciano draws this sedimentation of open references from the vastness of her career and out of her own formal inventions.
“Luciano’s works, especially her last 10 years, are essential to the history of painting, revealing a stunning and extraordinary creativity. The most important aspect of my work as a dealer is to have a positive impact on the art and the artists. Showing Luciano’s recent work, the unseen paintings of a 92 year old woman, is part of this commitment.”
Balthazar Lovay, founder Lovay Fine Arts
“At 92 years old, I can say it wasn’t easy to be a woman and an artist. My story, from the beginning, has always been the struggle to achieve the possibility of being recognized. Starting from my family, I had to fight tirelessly to be able to move from Sicily to Rome and attend the Art Academy. Then in my nude class in the early-1950’s I was the only woman apart from the models, who were often prostitutes. There too at the academy, it was necessary to be accepted by a world of young and old artists who were always men. But the female artists of the time were neither dolls nor idiots, they were women with strong characters: Their talent was the real novelty of those years.”
Lucia di Luciano, Artist
For access to the visual material, please follow this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1k7ERnDV1m42yHaOqJYEmB0vUJMUT4y2Q
For more information:
Lucia di Luciano
September 11 -to November 7
Lovay Fine Arts, Geneva
Lovay Fine Arts Rue des Sablons 4
1205 Geneva
Switzerland
+41787896029
contact@lappartement-geneve.com
https://www.lappartement-artgallery.com/
https://www.instagram.com/lovayfinearts/
For media requests:
Bertrand Borley
+447300889995
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Lovay Gallery:
Lovay Fine Arts is a contemporary art gallery located in Geneva, Switzerland. Established by Balthazar Lovay in 2022 , the gallery is dedicated to showcasing innovative and critical practices from both emerging and established international artists. It aims to bridge different generations and cultural backgrounds through a diverse exhibition program. Lovay Fine Arts regularly participates in significant art fairs and collaborates with artists who challenge conventional notions of identity, representation, and art history.
About the Artist:
Lucia Di Luciano is an Italian artist born in 1933, known for her pivotal role in the kinetic and programmed art movement (Arte Programmata). Alongside her husband, Giovanni Pizzo, she co-founded the artistic group “Gruppo Operativo R” in Rome during the 1960s. Her historical work explores geometric abstraction and its relation to early cybernetic theories, while her contemporary practice breaks this modernist position and explores a more intimate, poetic and complex universe, still grounded in a deep knowledge in art history. Di Luciano has exhibited widely, including at the Venice Biennale, and her contributions have significantly influenced contemporary art’s evolution. This Autumn her work will appear at Lovay Fine Arts in Geneva, as well as the Tate Modern in Britain.
About Balthazar Lovay:
Balthazar Lovay is the founder of Lovay Fine Arts, formerly a curator and editor. He was the Director of Fri Art Kunsthalle Fribourg (2013–19) as well as the curator of the European retrospective of Tony Conrad at Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2019); MAMCO, Geneva (2021); and Culturgest, Lisbon (2022). In his curatorial practice, he has both worked with artists from young generations (Cameron Rowland, Ghislaine Leung, Nora Turato, Jon Rafman) and historical (Kathe Burkhart, Peter Schuyff, Tony Conrad, Jean-Luc Moulène, Nathalie Dupasquier). He’s also has examined alternative art histories, overlooked artists and other topics like experimental cinema and music, radical arts or Sex Work. Together with Mathieu Copeland he published the important anthology The Anti-Museum for König Books, London.
