Enzo Cucchi
ENZO CUCCHI
The Portrait of a Painter
The film's structure follows the logic of the European alphabet. The logic of the visual resemblance between signs and forms. This structure is accompanied by the music of Andrea Ceccomori and Antonio Cocomazzi "Beyond - The Crossing Flute".
Long, slender hands, paintbrush-hands, words in disarray and disordered thoughts, Art which leans towards chaos. What is the key to understanding Enzo Cucchi?
Considered the most visionary among the Transavanguardia artists, by the 1980s, Enzo Cucchi had become an internationally renowned artist. He moved to Rome in the 1970s and momentarily abandoned poetry, dedicating himself almost exclusively to the visual arts. There Cucchi came into contact with artists like Francesco Clemente and Sandro Chia, with whom he established dialectical and intellectual dialogues.
To Cucchi, painting was a means of associating forms, concepts, and materials. He utilized the invasive expression of gesture, through which the canvas was transformed into a magical territory dense with images and thoughts, vehicles for a discourse fractured into a thousand suspended elements. He layered disparate symbols from classic or dreamlike matrices, ripped from reality or memory, setting in motion their interaction on the chromatic fabric from which they seemed at the same time to emerge. The loss of emporal-spatial coordinates and the continuous incursion into territories of culture and emotion coincided with Cucchi's undisciplined use of color - thick then smooth, violent then delicate - and he experimented widely with different artistic techniques, from painting to ceramics and mosaics.
The artist's interest in the interaction between the arts and other disciplines led him to participate in diverse spheres (from the visual arts to architecture, design, and fashion), and to harvest the importance and ingenuity of each encounter. This prompted collaborations with Ettore Sottsass and the Galleria Memphis, Rome (today Galleria Roberto Giustini) on editorial projects (Idisuguali, a project by Cucchi and Sottsass of the periodical edition of ceramic panels) as well as collaborative works with other artists and shared exhibitions.
The film on Enzo Cucchi is the result of seven years of observation.
ITALY, 24', DV Cam, colour
Production: Brintrup Filmproduktion/ LICHTSPIEL ENTERTAINMENT
