Calvario Mediterraneo (Primary Title)
Enzo Cucchi, Italian, born 1949 (Artist)
“You cannot come to painting by a conceptual path. . . . You have to feel the weight, the substance of matter, coming from such a distant place.” —Enzo Cucchi
During the 1980s, Cucchi was a central member of the Italian Transavantgarde, part of the wider movement of international Neo-Expressionism that rejected the austere and intellectual art of the 1960s and ‘70s in favor of strong emotion and historical and mythical subjects. Their paintings drew from both the art historical canon and popular imagery, including comics.
Cucchi’s sources are his own visions, traditional Italian painting, and his provincial background. He uses an intuitive, almost childlike manner to present the universe in apocalyptic terms, as a life and death struggle. Calvario Mediterraneo (Mediterranean Calvary) evokes both Classical and Christian worlds; Calvary is the site where Jesus is believed to have been crucified.
Chia, Cucchi, Lichtenstein, Twombly, Sperone Westwater Fischer, New York, NY, December 4, 1982 – January 4, 1983
Documenta 7, Kassel, Germany, 1982
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