Biography
Lorenzo Puglisi (Biella, 1971) lives and works in Bologna.
He is known for his pictorial research characterized by the extensive use of black to create a background of absolute darkness: from here, bursts of light emerge capable of defining volumes, faces, and parts of the body, like presences captured in an expression or gesture, in a journey towards the essence of representation and rich with references to the history of painting.
In recent years, his artistic research has focused on large canvases referring to works of the past and filtered through his iconography, starting with the exhibition Paintings curated by Mark Gisbourne in Paris in 2016. Numerous solo and group exhibitions have been held in public and private spaces in Italy and abroad, including the MUDEC in Milan, the CAC La Traverse in Paris, Il Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples, the Kulhaus in Berlin, Villa Bardini in Florence, The Historical Museum in Bremen, the Crypt of King’s Cross St. Pancras Church in London, the Museo Riso in Palermo, the Bramante Sacristy in Milan, the Moore House by Norman Foster in London, and the Marino Marini Museum in Florence.
In 2019, on the occasion of his solo exhibition Il Grande Sacrificio in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, he exhibited a six-meter-long oil painting on wood depicting his vision of Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper, commemorating the 500th anniversary of Da Vinci's death; a monograph on his work was published by the German publisher Hatje Cantz (Berlin), with an essay by Mark Gisbourne. During Frieze London 2019, he exhibited in the Crypt of King’s Cross St. Pancras Church in London, and in the same year, the director of the Uffizi, Dr. Eike Schmidt, commissioned a self-portrait for the collections of the Uffizi Galleries.
In 2020, he inaugurated an exhibition in the Basilica of Santo Spirito in Florence with one of his paintings, Crocifissione, displayed in front of Michelangelo's wooden crucifixion. In 2021, he held an exhibition of his works at the National Museum of Latvia in Riga (Art Museum Riga Bourse) in collaboration with the Uffizi Galleries of Florence, which loaned Portrait of a Man, a masterpiece by Jacopo Robusti, known as Tintoretto.
In 2022, he was invited to exhibit his paintings at the 59th Venice Biennale in the Arab-Syrian pavilion on the island of San Servolo, setting up an exhibition titled Viaggio al termine della notte, which garnered great interest from the media, critics, and the public. That same year, his self-portrait entered the collection of the Uffizi Galleries with a catalog published by Prearo Editore for the occasion: the work is now part of the core of 255 works (from the 1400s to the present day) displayed in the new arrangement inaugurated on July 10, 2023, in twelve rooms of the Florentine museum, with authors such as Primaticcio, Beccafumi, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Rubens, Delacroix, Wildt, Hayez, Sironi, Ensor, Vedova, Carrà, up to contemporary artists such as Pistoletto, Gormley, Clemente, Paladino, Bill Viola, and Ai Weiwei. A monograph on his work edited by Skira and written by Marco Meneguzzo was published in 2023 as a summary of twenty years of his career.
