Exhibition Catalogue
Leoncillo, materia radicale. Opere 1958-1968
Leoncillo, materia radicale. Works 1958-1968, curated by Enrico Mascelloni, Galleria dello Scudo, Verona, 15 Dicember 2018 - 30 April 2019, catalogue edited by Massimo Di Carlo, Laura Lorenzoni and Enrico Mascelloni, essays by Alessandra Caponi, Martina Corgnati, Lorenzo Fiorucci, Laura Lorenzoni, Enrico Mascelloni and Marco Tonelli, antology edited by Elena Dalla Costa.
Hardback
64 plates col., 336 ill. col. and 178 in b/w
382 pages
Skira, Milan, 2018
ISBN 978-88-572-4033-6
Artist
Leoncillo Leonardi, born in Spoleto in 1915, is one of the most important European sculptors of the post-war period. He had the great merit of revitalizing such an ancient Italian artisanal tradition as that of ceramics. He won the gold medal for applied art at the7th Milan Triennial in 1940 with his first ceramics fired in Umbrian kilns. He soon began to take part in the Roman art scene where he became friends with Ettore Colla, Renato Guttuso, Toti Scialoja and Giulio Turcato. In 1946 he was among those who signed the “Nuova Secessione Artistica Italiana” manifesto and later took part in the first show of the “Fronte nuovo delle arti” movement which, immediately after the war, was internationally considered to be the real representative Italian avant-garde. In 1954 he is at the Venice Biennale, where he returned to exhibit in 1948, 1950, 1952, 1960 and 1968; he was asked to exhibit in a single room together with Lucio Fontana and here he revealed his close relationship to the abstract art Fontana was developing during that period.
